LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

PRESENTED BY 



UMTSD STATES OF AMEEIOA. 



SCHOOLS AND COMMUNISM, 



NATIONAL SCHOOLS, 



AND OTHER PAPERS. 



1^'^,-k"" B. Gr. I^ORTHROP. 



[From Report of Connecticut State Board of Education for 1879.] 



NEW HAVEN: 

TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR, PRINTERS. 

1879. 



H 



M "I 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
Schools aud Communism. - - - - - - - 5 

Schools and Pauperism, ------- 9 

National Schools, - - - - - - - - 14 

Decennary of Free Schools, . - - -,• - - 19 

Neglected Children, - - - - - - - - 24 

French Views of American Schools, - - - - - 27 

School Hygiene, -------- 48 

Charles Morgan, - i - - - - - - -62 

The Normal School, -------- 66 

The Field Parks, ...--.- 71 

Clinton Rural Improvement Association, - - - - - 79 



SCHOOLS AND COMMUNISM. 

In 1868 a prominent plea against Free Schools was the argu- 
ment that "the system is communistic in its principle and ten- 
dency. Establish free schools and you encourage a demand for 
free food, free clothes, free shoes, and free homes.'' Professor 
Faucett, liberal, fair and progressive as he is, urged the same 
objection in Parliament, saying, during the discussion of the 
new "Elementary Education Act," which was passed in 1870, 
"If the demand for free schools were not resisted, encourage- 
ment would be given to Socialism in its most baneful form." 

Time tests all theories better than arguments. In Connecti- 
cut a decade of free schools has witnessed no new tendencies to 
Communism. The general intelligence of New England was 
one obvious cause of its exemption from the communistic rail- 
way conificts in the summer of 1877. The sober second 
thought prevailed here, while madness ruled the hour else- 
where. The last election in Connecticut showed plainly the 
popular dread of the socialistic tendencies and dogmas, which 
were repudiated by both the leading political parties. In Mas- 
sachusetts, where free schools have been maintained for more 
than two hundred years, there is as little Socialism as in any 
land in the world. Indeed, throughout New England, there is 
no tendency to Communism among the descendants of the gen- 
uine New England stock. The minimum that exists is limited 
to a small portion of the foreign element. Though curiosity 
attracted crowds to hear Dennis Kearney last autumn, it is due 
to free schools and the consequent intelligence of the people, 
that bis communistic tirades disgusted all classes and 
prompted the candidate who first sought his alliance to dis- 
own his dogmas and disfellowship him. 

I find among all classes, employers and employes, in the fac- 
tories and on the farms, a growing distrust, not to say detesta- 
tion, of Communism. The mad outcry of the Internationals, 
"Equality of conditions," "Capital is the enemy of labor," 
finds no response from the intelligent laborers of Connecticut. 
Thanks to our schools, they know tbat the condition of the 
1 



operative improves with the increase of industrial capital, which 
always befriends labor, when it multiplies the opportunities 
of education and profitable eniplojment. Nothing helps the 
laborer more than that education which gives him both the 
desire and the power to better his condition, to improve first 
himself and then his home and household. 

As a precaution against the communistic tendencies which 
now agitate and alarm Germany and other portions of Europe, 
and find here their fiercest advocates among the refugees thence 
escaped to our shores, the general principles underlying this 
subject should be studied by our teachers and presented in oral 
lessons in our schools. A few simple school talks on this 
theme might forestall much mischief in coming years. The 
intelligent workmen who by industry and economy are enabled 
to own their homes, however humble, or indeed to own any- 
thing, cannot be fooled by that insane crusade against capital, 
which really means wages without work, or which lets the lazy 
and profligate share equally with the industrious and frugal. 
The equality of conditions of which they dream, would be the 
low level of a common barbarism. Even enforced equality of 
wages lessens the motives to industry, skill and fidelity, and 
restrains the freedom of competition. Once applied, these 
notions would destroy not only capital but the motives and 
means of its future increase and protection. Destroy capital, 
and labor would suffer first and most. Capital and labor, there- 
fore, are not enemies. It is only ignorance and prejudice that 
find any necessary opposition between the two. There should 
be kindness and sympathy between the employer and the 
employed. There need be no alienation between the rich and 
the poor. There should be no tyranny of capital over labor, 
nor hostility of labor to capital. The capitalist should fully 
understand the trials of the laborer's lot, and strive to amelio- 
rate his condition, and the operative should know the risks, 
anxieties and conditions of success on the part of the manufac- 
,turer. There should be liberal pay on the one side, and fair 
profits on the other. The interests of both classes are bound 
together. If either one is harmed, the other must ultimately 
suffer. Certainly the laborer cannot long suffer in health, edu- 
cation or pay, without harm to the employer, and large losses 



to employers inevitably extend to the operatives. They are 
copartners, and cannot afford to be antagonists. Capital is as 
dependent on labor as labor is on capital, and only as both 
work in harmony, can the highest good of each be secured. 
Indeed, labor is both superior and prior to capital, and alone 
originally produces capital. Many a penniless laborer, because 
well educated, frugal and industrious, has become an independ- 
ent capitalist. Our most successful manufacturers have toiled 
■up from penury to affluence. This aspiration may stimulate 
every one who is educated enough to combine skill with labor. 

Communism is an exotic in this land. It does not easily 
take root in our soil, and the climate is uncongenial. Its chief 
advocates are homeless foreigners, even the immigrants long 
resident here have become so schooled by public sentiment 
and by our free institutions, as to be well nigh assimilated and 
Americanized. 

Schools and the diffusion of property are our safeguards 
against Socialistic extremes. John Adams well said, "The 
ownership of land is essential to industrial thrift and to national 
security and strength and prosperity." Switzerland, with insti- 
tutions as free as ours, is safe from Communism, for two rea- 
sons — the maintenance of free schools, and the general owner- 
ship of land. The Internationals may meet in free Switzer- 
land, and nobody is frightened or disturbed by their vagaries. 
Germany has education, but not an equal distribution of land. 
Her vast standing army, consuming without producing, with 
its enormous expenses and exactions, has created a great revul- 
sion of feeling among the people. The glory of conquest and 
the untold milliards of the French indemnity mainly expended 
on new fortifications and military equipments, do not atone for 
the mourning and bereavement brought to so many now deso- 
late homes, the heavy burden of taxation, the dread of con- 
scription, the fear of new complications and wars, and the inex- 
orable demand that every boy shall spend three weary years of 
service in the camp. Myriads of families with boys approach- 
ing the military age, have emigrated to other lands to escape 
this dreaded conscription. 

In France the home of Communism has always been in Paris. 
The horrors of the Commune in 1871 proved suicidal to the sys- 



tem. Even Paris learned then a lesson not likely to be forgotten. 
But the great body of the French people, even then, had little 
sympathy with communistic doctrines, and to-day the French 
nation, with her 5,000,000 of land-owners, is strongly the 
other way. Here lie her strength and security. To illustrate 
the happy influence of this wide diffusion of landed property, 
Michelet describes a French peasant walking out of a Sunday, 
in his clean linen and unsoiled blouse, surveying fondly his 
little farm. His face is illumined as he thinks these acres are 
his own, from the surface of the globe to its center, and that 
the air is his own from the surface up to the seventh heaven. 
He is there alone — not at work, not to keep off interlopers, but 
solely to enjoy the feeling of ownership, and to look upon him- 
self as a member of responsible society. Thus in all lands and 
among all peoples, " the magic of property turns sand into 
gold." 

In the United States there are nearly 3,000,000 farmers with 
farms, averaging 163 acres each, besides a large number who 
own their dwellings and house-lots. These form the grand 
army of the Kepublic — each a volunteer, equipped and ready to 
strike down Communism, wherever its hydra head may appear. 
Let even the Socialistic leaders, whom Bismarck has banished, 
once learn here to till their own acres, and they will be con- 
verted to the true faith — of the sacred rights of property. 



SCHOOLS AND PAUPEEISM. 

Teu years ago strenuous objections were made to free schools, 
as being a charity tending to pauperize the people, a kind of 
alms that no man could accept without impairing his manli- 
ness and self-respect. But they are now recognized as the peo- 
ple's schools by right, not favor, and prized as never before. 
Instead of being a charity, tending to demean and pauperize 
its recipients, all find themselves recognized as equal partners 
in the concern, having an equal voice in selecting the mana- 
gers, in raising the funds, or in criticising the methods adopted. 
Thus the school is no more a charity than is the free public 
road or bridge. Help in schooling is really help towards doing 
without help — towards self-reliance. In Europe, those who 
express the greatest apprehension that the independence of the 
working classes would be destroyed by free schools, evince 
little desire to develop that genuine independence which true 
education fosters. ' In lands where the insolence of office is 
proverbial, they make it a prominent lesson to every child to 
"order himself reverently and lowly to all his betters, and to 
submit to the humors of my Lords." The people whose '' inde- 
pendence" is so carefully guarded, are kept under various petty 
and vexatious restraints. Says Francis Adams, one of the 
most earnest advocates of free schools in Grreat Britain, " There 
is a large class in England, from whom we hear most about 
preserving the independence of the poor, who have always 
been opposed to measures intended to enlarge popular freedom. 
They find a personal gratification in the exercise of petty char- 
ity and the power to deal out to the working-classes little doles 
such as are provided for the remission and payment of school 
fees. Notwithstanding their homilies about parental independ- 
ence and responsibility, they possess the spirit of patronage so 
long fostered by the social conditions of the country, which 
has done much to keep so many of our people in a state of 
miserable dependence and subjection. When their system of 
alms-giving can be carried on at the public expense, their zest 
is no doubt greater and they will not willingly surrender any 



10 

power which still has force to pluck 'the slavish hat from the 
villager's head.' This class now stands in the way of the com- 
plete realization of the free school system in England." 

The vast pauperism of England, especially among the farm 
laborers, is largely due to the want of free schools. The facts 
and figures, both in regard to illiteracy and pauperism are 
appalling. The saddest sight to me in England strangely con- 
trasted with her glories and beauties many and great, of which 
every Englishman is justly proud, was the low and wretched 
condition of her illiterate masses. Lest any just statement 
from an alien may seem exaggerated, I will quote from those 
to the manor born, for these facts from the lips of Englishmen, 
prove the evils of ignorance, if not the value of universal edu- 
cation. Kev. Dr. J. H. Eiggs of London, who, in his zeal to 
prove our free schools a failure, quotes my description* of a few 
of our worst school-houses and poorest district schools, as if 
they were of general significance, and proclaims that ten weeks 
serves for the training of teachers in the Normal School of 
Connecticut, and that some of the schools of Maine are kept 
open but three or four weeks in the year, with kindred exag- 
gerations and caricatures, unworthy of reply, and who finds 
almost everything English superior to anything American, is 
compelled to say, "English pauperism is a problem and a por- 
tent which seldom makes a due impression on an Englishman. 
Its monstrous character and dimensions are so familiar to us 
that they seldom strike us as monstrous. This vast and com- 
plex evil, this ulcer in the body politic, in its character and 
extent in this country, is absolutely a unique fact, because 
there is nothing comparable with it in the world besides. The 
number of persons annually in receipt of pauper relief is 
upwards of a million. The annual cost of poor relief is 
£7,886,724 (nearly $40,000,000). Abjectness and reckless- 
ness form the main element of the pauper's home. His cot- 
tage may consist of three rooms — the common room filled with 
litter and discomfort, and two bed rooms for all the inmates, 
parents and children, lads and lasses and often a male lodger, 
so that neatness and decency are precluded. Too often the 
cottage is even worse, a wretched double cell, where penury 
* As found in several Reports of the Board of Education. 



11 

cowers, chastity can hardly survive, and female delicacy must 
be unknown, the house only a shelter, full of cumber and litter. 
Such are the homes of the majority of our English peasantry 
in the southern, western and south middle districts, and of 
many in most parts of England and in wide districts of Scot- 
land and Wales. Such is the condition of the pauperized peas- 
ants, not as poets have painted, England's glory, but her 
reproach." Rev. James Martiueau says : "The social discrep- 
ancies which disfigure and affect society have here assumed a 
monstrous and fearful character. Our country is a vast conge- 
ries of exaggerations. Enormous wealth and saddest poverty, 
sumptuous idleness and unrewarded toil, princely provision for 
learning and the most degrading ignorance, a large amount of 
laborious philanthropy but a larger of unconquered misery and 
gin terrify us with their dreadful contrasts of light and shade. 
It is appalling to think of the moral cost by which England has 
become materially great Where is the laborer by whose 
hand the soil has been tilled? In a cabin, with his children, 
where the domestic decencies cannot be. I know not which is 
the most heathenish, the guilty negligence of our lofty men, or 
the fearful degradation of the low." 

John Bright says : " Fearful suffering exists among the rural 
laborers in almost every part of this kingdom. What wretched, 
uncared for, untaught brutes, in helpless stolid ignorance, are 
the people who raise the crops on which we live, and what dirt, 
vice and misery in the houses where seven or eight persons of 
both sexes are penned up together in one rickety, foul, vermin- 
haunted bed-room — their wages reduced to the very lowest 
point at which their lives can be kept in them ! They are 
heart-broken, spirit-broken, despairing men — reduced to such 
brutality, recklessness, audacity of vice and extreme helpless- 
ness that they have no aspirations to better their condition. 
Accustomed to this from their youth, they can see nothing in 
the future which can afford them a single ray of hope. As 
the rural laborer looks longingly up the social ladder of ranks, 
the first six or eight steps are broken out, and there seems to 
him no chance to span the chasm." 

J. Scott Russell said ten years ago, " Something must be done, 
or our working classes will be grievously wronged and the 



12 

whole nation suffer. Poor England, standing by idle, is too 
late. Her workingmen, grown up uneducated, cannot now be 
educated, are too old to learn. They have lost a generation. 
Where was the fault? where the blame? Why did not our 
statesmen and aristocracy, already provided with special uni- 
versities and schools for their own training, foresee that our 
trade was going away to more skilled nations, and warn us in 
time? The contrast between England, and Switzerland is this; 
England spends more than five times as much on pauperism 
and crime as she does on education, and Switzerland spends 
seven times as much on education as she does on pauperism 
and crime." 

It was in view of startling facts and statements like these 
from her own countrymen that England organized in 1870 an 
efficient system of public education. It is a striking fact that 
the latest statistics show a great diminution of both pauperism 
and crime. Instead of a million of paupers in 1870, the num- 
ber returned January, 1878, was 726,000.* The cost of juvenile 
crime and pauperism has been remarkably reduced. The 
London Police Commissioners testify to a great diminution of 
juvenile offences and affirm that every gang of juvenile thieves 
known to them has been broken up. Even the adult popula- 
tion has been reached and elevated in some degree through 
their children. New hope and ambition have come to many 
an illiterate farm laborer, himself born to despair, by reason of 
ignorance born to helplessness and hopelessness, as he finds, 
though a thing unknown and undreamed of before, his children 
at school, and hence sees dawning upon them better prospects 
and possibilities than ever fell to his hard lot. The hopes cher- 
ished for children have thus cheered many a humble cottage. 

In striking contrast to the depressed condition of the farm 
laborer in his own land it is interesting to see the picture of the 
New England farmer drawn by Eev. Dr. E. W. Dale, of 
Birmingham, in an address at Canonbury, England, January 
17, 1879. When traveling in this country, he frequently ex- 
pressed his surprise and admiration in view of the intelligence 
and independence of the farmers of New England. 

* The unprecedented financial embarrassments now experienced in England 
will no doubt swell the next returns. 



13 

After remarking tbat for a century and a half the Puritan 
colonists had been left practically undisturbed by any foreign 
element, Mr. Dale proceeded to speak of the type of character 
which had been developed in New England and of the present 
social condition of the people. " From the 21,000 persons who, 
after five generations, were found in those States, descendants 
numbering at least four millions might be reckoned. At the 
present moment no population on the face of the earth enjoyed 
equal prosperity. Wealth was more equally distributed than in 
any other community ; and the real and personal estate, liable to 
assessment, now averaged nearly £240 per head for the inhab- 
itants, or XI, 150 for each family, reckoning the family at fi^ve 
persons. The New England farmer had from the first adopted 
the belief that the ivay to fight the devil was by the school and the 
church., and that belief had been thoroughly and consistently 
acted upon. The influence of this vigorous race upon the 
United States, as a whole, had been immense. It was they 
who had been the great pioneers in the development of the 
resources of the country. It was they, chiefly, who had built 
Chicago, and who rebuilt it, after it had been destroyed by fire, 
with a quickness and splendor which rivalled the achievements 
described in the pages of romance. Prom the farm houses of 
New England had sprung many of America's noblest orators, 
most learned theologians, and greatest statesmen and philan- 
thropists, and in the future the same people would contribute 
largely to the stability and greatness of their country. The 
history of these colonies, as contrasted with the history of other 
colonies, was an illustration of the true path of national great- 
ness." 

This remarkable contrast between the farm laborers of En- 
gland and New England as described by English writers 
furnishes a demonstration of the economy and value of the 
school system so long neglected there and maintained here. 
The earnest appeals of Joseph Arch, John Bright, Dr. Dale 
and others in behalf of the farm laborers of England, have 
awakened general sympathy, advanced their wages, and amel- 
iorated their condition. 



NATIONAL SCHOOLS. 

" Americans have no National System of Education," is the 
slur one often hears in Europe, To this criticism, my ready 
answer was, we need none and are fully determined to liave 
none. The maintenance and control of schools has never been 
the aim of our National Grovernment. 

Our local independence and repugnance to federal interfer- 
ence and our complete State sovereignty in educational mat- 
ters, is an enigma to Europeans, being in marked contrast to 
their traditions and usages. In England, for example, the 
School Board of any town or city may not select a site, 
build a school house, or prescribe the amount of a school fee 
without the sanction of the National Educational Department. 
But the complete decentralization of the American school 
system, though a point of weakness in European eyes, is, in 
fact, a prime source of its strength. The fact that our Schools 
are wholly in the hands of the people, supported by the funds 
they raise, controlled by officers chosen by them and responsi- 
ble to them, is a leading element of their prosperity. Though 
certain bills lately introduced into Congress indicate that a 
few would welcome European centralization and control, the 
general public sentiment of the country has so long been 
growing in favor of the unfettered working of State systems, 
that this has now become our settled policy, which no lobby in 
Washington can change if it would, and should not if it could. 

If a strong central government be essential for an ignorant 
nation, an intelligent people can govern themselves. In Amer- 
ica, the success of schools in each Slate will depend upon the 
intelligence and consequent appreciation of its people. One of 
the worst legacies left by slavery is that of ignorance, and con- 
sequent indifference to schools, or rather of insensibility to the 
evils of illiteracy or to the advantages of education. Shall the 
admitted school destitution of the South, or of some new 
Western States, be promptly removed by federal agency, or 
more gradually supplanted by developing a proper local public 
sentiment. In the past, states and nations have been slow in 



15 

learning the lesson that alike to individuals and peoples, igno- 
rance means waste and weakness, if not pauperism and crime, 
and that education tends to economy, thrift and virtue. 

But there is a great acceleration in the working of moral 
and intellectual forces so that now in a decade, sometimes in a 
single year, are accomplished broader results than formerly in a 
century. The day for coercion and dictation is passing. The 
growing assimilation and power of public sentiment is felt the 
world over. It has broken down the walls of China, the isola- 
tion of Japan, the serfdom of Eussia, the slavery of America, 
and is now rapidly relaxing the grasp of tyranny even in that 
center of oriental despotism, Turkey. But nowhere else is 
public sentiment so supreme in its influence as in America, 
and never before has that sentiment been so strong in favor of 
the support of free public schools as to-day. 

A striking illustration, both of the difference and power of 
public sentiment, was furnished more than a century ago by 
the replies sent by two American colonies to .questions put by 
the English Commissioners for Foreign Plantations. The Gov- 
ernor of Virginia replied, " 1 thank Grod we have no free 
schools or printing presses, and I hope we shall not have these 
hundred years." The Governor of Connecticut answered, 
" One-fourth the annual revenues of the Colony is laid out in 
maintaining free schools for the education of our children." 
Accordingly, till after the late civil war, Virginia had no gen- 
eral public school system. Thomas Jefferson jjrepared with 
his own hand a bill for a free school system, of which he said, 
" By this bill, the people will be qualified to understand their 
rights and to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence 
their parts in self-government. Provided for all children 
alike, rich and poor, the expenses of these schools will be 
borne by the inhabitants of each county, in proportion to 
their general tax-rates, and all this will be effected without the 
violation of a single natural right of any individual citizen." 
Jefferson caused the words, " Founder of the University" to 
be inscribed on his tombstone, but he placed a far higher esti- 
mate on free schools than on "superior education." Though 
defeated in this cherished plan, he defended it to the last, and 
said shortly before his death, " Were it necessary to give up 



16 

either the Primaries, or the University, I would rather abandon 
the last, because it is safer to have a whole people respectably 
enlightened, than a few in a high state of science, and the 
many in ignorance. The advantages of popular education are 
above all estimate. The objects should be to give every citi- 
zen the information he needs for the transaction of his own 
business, enabling him to calculate for himself and express and 
preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing ; to 
improve by reading, his morals and his faculties ; to under- 
stand his duties to his neighbor and country, and to discharge 
with competence the functions confided to him by either ; to 
know his rights and exercise with order and justice those he 
retains ; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he 
delegates, and to notice their conduct with diligence, candor 
and judgment, and, in general, to observe with intelligence and 
faithfulness all his social relations. All the States but our own 
are sensible that knowledge is power. We are sinking into the 
barbarism of our Indian aborigines, and expect, like them, to 
oppose by ignorance the overwhelming mass of light and science 
by which we shall be surrounded. Surely Governor Clinton's 
display of the gigantic efforts of New York in education, will 
stimulate the pride as well as the patriotism of our Legislature 
to look to the reputation and safety of their own State, to res- 
cue it from the degradation of becoming the Barbary of the 
Union and of falling into the ranks of our own negroes. To 
that condition it is fast sinking." How different would have 
been the history of Virginia had she heeded the wise counsel 
of this, her most eminent and far-seeing statesman? To the 
lasting harm of that State a different sentiment prevailed, so 
that as late as I860, a leading Virginia paper said, " We have 
got to hating everything with the prefix y?-ee, from free negroes 
down and up through the whole catalogue, free farms, free 
labor, free society, free will, free thinking, free children and 
FKEE SCHOOLS — all belonging to the same brood of damnable 
sins. But the worst of all these abominations is the modern 
system of free schools. The New England system of free 
schools has been the prolific source of the infidelities and trea- 
sons that have turned her cities into Sodoms and Gomorrahs, 
and her land into the common nestling place of howling Bed- 



17 

lamites. We abominate the system, because the schools are 
free." The long neglect of public schools so manifestly checked 
the growth and prosperity of the Old Dominion, notwith- 
standing her vast natural resources, and created so marked a 
contrast between her and other States far less favored in all the 
elements of material prosperity, that the logic of events has at 
last swept away these objections and converted old opponents 
to friends and supporters of free schools. At length Virginia 
rejoices in a free public school system. The progress of her 
public schools since the war is remarkable, accomplished in the 
face of prejudice, ignorance, and great financial embarrass- 
ments, for Yirginia had her full share in the loss of over 
" three thousand millions of dollars sunk by the Southern 
States by the war," an amount larger than all the property of 
New England. To the question, How can schools be organized 
for the Southern States, without Federal aid or interference? 
the answer is, Look at Virginia, especially the schools of 
Richmond, Petersburg, Lynchburg, Staunton and Norfolk, 
Public sentiment there has been revolutionized. The common 
schools are growing in favor. Prejudice, opposition and penu- 
riousness of course still exist, but are evidently waning. I in- 
spected most of the schools of Richmond with as much delight 
as surprise, alike in view of the interest of the pupils, the cul- 
ture of the teachers and the excellence of the schools. Private 
schools have greatly diminished and the children of the 
rich generally attend the public schools. Considered as the 
growth of eight years, the Virginia system is a most gratifying 
work. In the light of such facts, and in view of the rapid 
working of intellectual forces in this age and country, and the 
growing power of public sentiment, shall the most illiterate 
portions of our land be reached by National Schools supported 
by National aid and in any way controlled by a National De- 
partment? Shall the National Bureau of Education become 
a Federal Department, enlarged and authorized to organize and 
maintain a National University — or, with still greater expan- 
sion, empowered to establish schools and distribute the income 
from the sale of public lands, whether in proportion to existing 
illiteracy, school attendance, or the length and grade of the 
schools maintained ? 



IS 

Hitherto the National Bureau of Education has been simply 
advisory. It has, and it was intended to have, no authority. 
As an agency for collecting and disseminating needful informa- 
tion, it has already done great good, and promises to be still 
more useful in the future. But the attempt to organize a 
National University, support and direct local schools, or in 
any way interfere with State systems, would end its useful- 
ness, if not end itself. Every true friend of this Bureau 
should protest against any such " enlargement of the field of 
its operations." The principle of State independence is too 
firmly fixed in the faith of all classes to brook any federal 
interference in school matters, even in the States or Terri- 
tories most destitute and backward in education. In an ill- 
conditioned community like that in New Mexico for example, 
still Mexican in their traditions, sentiments and peoples, juxta- 
posed, but not blended with the heterogeneous elements of a 
swarming immigration from all parts of the country, not to say 
of the world, American ideas and institutions are yet in their 
rudimentary forms and earlier stages of development. Shall a 
Federal Bureau, at once in European style, enforce there its best 
plans of public schools, or leave them by a slower, surer, and 
more healthful process, to work ont their own salvation ? As 
the schools of every community answer to local public opin- 
ion, their success must depend on the sympathy and apprecia- 
tion of the people. Public sentiment is a growth, not the 
creature of power made to order of any sort or size, as some 
have talked of " liat money." 



DECENNAEY OF FEEE SCHOOLS. 

The free school system of Connecticut has now had a trial 
of ten years and is no longer an experiment. This " new 
law " was so radical in its character as to meet general opposi- 
tion when first proposed in 1867. During the next year there 
was so great a change in public sentiment that it was enacted 
with great unanimity by the General Assembly of 1868. The 
struggle which this system had to wage for its existence is 
over, for it has been amply ratified by the people. The 
gauge of public interest is the increased burden of taxation 
which the people of Connecticut have chosen to bear, for 
school taxes are self-imposed. The amount raised by taxa- 
tion for schools ten years ago was $628,152.12. The amount 
raised by State, town and district taxation last year was 
$1,252,248.63, or about double the amount reported in 1868. 

The enemies of free schools have either been converted or 
learned the futility of open opposition. Dissentients are still 
found whose sympathy is needed to give the highest efficiency 
to the system. As the condition of the schools in each dis- 
trict answers largely to local public sentiment, the cooperation 
of every parent and citizen is essential to the fullest success. 

A brief review of the history and results of the free school 
system furnishes encouragement to its friends, and presents 
facts fitted to satisfy the minds of all honest doubters. Con- 
vinced that the rate-bill was wrong in principle and harmful in 
practice I directed my earliest efforts, on entering the service 
of the State, to secure its repeal. During the session of the 
Legislature for 1867, the Joint Standing Committee on Edu- 
cation finally consented to recommend a bill for free schools, 
though with little faith in the measure and no expectation of 
carrying it. As the bill met no favor in either House, out of 
courtesy to its author, it was referred to the next General 
Assembly. During the next year the subject was fully dis- 
cussed in numerous meetings in all parts of the State, the 
Secretary giving two hundred and six lectures on this and 
kindred topics. 



20 

Many sincere friends of education, deprecating these efforts, 
gave faithful warning as to their certain failure. The subject 
was freely discussed also in the press, and brought very promi- 
nently before the people. The sentiment was widely pro- 
claimed that it is the duty and interest of the State to furnish 
substantially equal common school privileges to the children 
of all classes. Self-protection was claimed to be the right of 
the government. For this purpose it maintains armies and 
navies. But safer and better every way than forts and fleets, 
indispensable as they may be, better for its peace and securitj^, 
its prosperity and protection, is universal education. 

Comparatively few now press the objection which was 
widely urged ten years ago, viz: "It is unjust to tax me for 
the education of other people's children. I have none. Let 
those who have, pay the cost of their schooling." This objec- 
tion is founded on a false theory of government. The State 
justly claims a right to its citizens for its defense, a right to 
lay its equal and needful claim on their property, time and 
service. For the achievement of our independence, and more 
recently for the preservation of our institutions, how many were 
called to endure toil, hardship and death. This claim of the 
State involves the correlative truth that the State has duties as 
well as rights, and foremost among them is the duty of secur- 
ing a good common school education to the children of all 
classes. 

The right of a State to support free schools is little else than 
its right to defend itself by a humanizing and civilizing edu- 
cation against what otherwise would become a degraded and 
dangerous class in society. The right of a free State to self- 
existence implies the right to maintain free schools, essential as 
they are to its preservation and prosperity. Education is the 
cheapest police agency a State can employ. In a wisely admin- 
istered government, educational taxes are the fares which we 
pay on railroad cars, the price for being safely carried and well 
provided for, through the journey of life. These taxes are 
founded primarily not on the idea of benefiting parents and 
children, but the broader view, that the State has a proprietary 
interest in all persons and property within its bounds and espe- 
cially has a stake in her youth that they may be well qualified 



21 

for her service, whether that shall be on the farm, in the fac- 
tory, in the counting room or in the field of arms. It was really 
the better education of the North that saved the Union, during 
the late civil war, as it was the ignorance of the " poor white 
trash" making them the dupes of demagogues that rendered the 
rebellion possible in the South. 

In 1868 Governor English exerted his influence strongly in 
favor of free schools. In his annual message to the Legisla- 
lature he said : " The rate-bill should be abolished and the 
schools sustained at the common expense." In his parting 
address to the General Assembly of that year he said : " The 
measures which you have adopted to promote the interests of 
the people will meet with a generous approval at their hands. 
Especially will they thank you for the interest you have 
taken in the common schools. In adopting the free school 
system recommended in my annual message, I am confident 
you have taken an important step forward in the cause of edu- 
cation, and that your action in this regard will prove as bene- 
ficial in results as the motives which prompted it were free 
from political influence or bias." 

As Governor English intimates, this new law was not in any 
wise a party measure. That a measure so radical should pass 
unanimously in the Senate and with only four nays in the 
House was more than its most sanguine friends expected. The 
press of the State was a unit in its favor. The leading men of 
both parties were its advocates. It is fortunate that on educa- 
tional questions, men of all parties and all religious denomina- 
tions meet on common ground and cordially cooperate for the 
common good. The platforms and creeds, which divide men 
outside, should never enter the common school — common be- 
cause open to all, free to all ; where no class distinctions are 
recognized and no favoritism is shown. 

The law has received an emphatic ratification from the peo- 
ple. Two years later, when its influence in increasing taxa- 
tion had been fully felt, an earnest effort was made in the 
Legislature for its repeal, which signally failed. Opposition 
and discussion helped this measure, as they always do any 
other which can bear close scrutiny and stand the test of ex- 
perience. When the proof was placed before the people that 
2 



22 

thousands of children had been barred from school by the rate- 
bill, it was generally admitted that the results already attained 
proved the wisdom and necessity of the free system. 

The Democratic State Convention, held in Hartford, January 
17, 1871, unanimously adopted the following comprehensive 
resolution : 

^'Resolved, That the source of power being in the people, Free Schools and 
general education are essential to good government and the perpetuation of 
free Institutions." 

The Eepublican State Convention, held in New Haven one 
week later, adopted a resolution equally strong in favor of free 
schools. Since that date, no opposition to the measure has 
been made or intimated in the Legislature. The subject of 
free schools was ably discussed by School Visitors in their 
Reports to their several towns. To give a single illustration of 
the strong and practical way this subject was brought home to 
the people in local reports in 1873, the able Report for Litch- 
field, written by Grovernor Andrews, then Secretary of the 
Board of School Visitors, said : " The argument in favor of 
free schools is short and decisive. Every person recognizes 
the duty of society to protect the lives of children. Our law 
protects the lives even of children unborn, for the reason that 
it is for the benefit of society that children should be born and 
reared. If, then, society may for its own benefit preserve the 
mere animal existence of a child, the obligation irresistibly 
follows that society must see to it that the life so preserved 
shall develop into a useful, intelligent and moral citizen, and 
not into a ruffian and a curse. The logic is impregnable ; 
society should either destroy all children, or guide, protect and 
train them up to careful citizenship. Establish infanticide, or 
some system of free instruction. But the time for argument 
on the abstract question of free schools in our State is passed. 
As good citizens, we ought to use every efibrt that the system 
so inaugurated shall be successful." 

In 1868, a leading objection to the system was its alleged 
tendency to lessen the interest and responsibility of parents. 
The natural argument was that men never value what costs 
them nothing. But the fact is, parents do pay, and all pay 
their fair and equal portion for the support of this central, 



23 

public interest. The poor man who only pays a poll tax 
gives his share as truly as does the millionaire. The system 
has manifestly dignified the school in the esteem of both pa- 
rents and pupils, and quickened the educational spirit of the 
whole people. Every tax-payer, having contributed his part 
to the support of the schools, feels that he has a right to look 
after his investment. The details of our public schools are 
better known to parents than are the plans of private schools 
to their patrons. As a result of free schools, the great majority 
of the town reports concur in saying: "There has been a de- 
cided advance in the number at school, in regularity of attend- 
ance, and in the manifest interest of the people." More than 
ever it is felt that the schools belong to the people. In patron- 
izing them the poorest parent is proudly conscious he has no 
leave to ask, no patron to conciliate, and no alms to beg. Every 
body pays something and feels that it is a good investment, 
and one which justly entitles him to its advantages. 

In the past ten years the increase in enumeration has been 
14,757, while the increase in the number registered in public 
schools has been 20,438. The number in private schools was 
first reported nine years ago, and the increase in that time has 
been 1,526. If it be assumed that the number ten years since 
was the same as nine years ago, — which is very nearly correct, — 
then the increase in attendance in both public and private 
schools in the last ten years is 21,964, which exceeds the 
increase in enumeration by 7,207. . 



NEGLECTED CHILDREN. 

This subject continues to claim attention. . As the trend of 
the tide is here against us, to stem it requires constant watch- 
fulness. Without effort, a backset would cover ground well 
nigh reclaimed. For, however well done, this is a work like 
that of a physician, that never stays done. Old cures will not 
stop the breaking out of new cases. In dealing with negligent 
parents our main reliance has still been kindness and persua- 
sion, appeals to their parental love and pride, their sense of 
duty and their personal interest in view of the great importance 
of education to their children, and the rich privileges freely 
proffered them in the public schools. The same arguments 
have often reached the children, and thus they have gained a 
higher appreciation of the influence of the school upon their 
happiness, thrift and prosperity through life. Teachers as well 
as school officers may greatly help in this good work. It is the 
teachers duty, or rather his privilege, to visit the parents of 
truant or neglected children, learn the causes of delinquency 
and secure parental cooperation. As I have urged this duty, 
a few teachers have asked substantially — " Is that in the bond," 
"what does the law demand?" as if the one ruling thought was — 
what is the minimum work I must do ; but fortunately there 
are but few teachers whose theory and practice limit their 
duties and sympathies to the school house and school hours. 
On the other hand, a large proportion of our teachers, bent on 
doing the utmost good to their pupils, inquire into causes of 
absence from school, visit pupils in sickness, and thus often win 
the confidence and cooperation of parents otherwise captious or 
indifferent. 

Among the causes of absenteeism is the want of proper 
clothing. In these hard times, while many willing hands are 
unable to find employment, this plea is by no means limited to 
the huts or haunts of indolence, intemperence and profligacy. 
Where parents are really too poor to provide comfortable 
clothing, the pressing needs of their children should enlist the 
sympathies of the benevolent. Here true charity may do as 



25 

truly Christian work as by any gifts for missions in pagan 
lands. That charity which really begins at home is at once 
most comprehensive and diffusive. Poor children have often 
been thus provided that they might attend the Sabbath school, 
and this effort is worthy of all praise, but even for morality 
and piety, thirty hours a week in the public school is worth 
far more than one hour in the Sabbath school. In some towns 
the Selectmen have met this exigency. While great caution 
should be used not to encourage indolence and improvidence, 
there are cases of destitution where town aid may be used as 
wisely to prevent starving the mind as famishing the body. 

The fact that nearly ninety-five per cent, of our children are 
reported as in schools of all kinds, shows that the law for the 
prevention of illiteracy has worked beneficently and opened to 
hundreds the door of the school house otherwise closed to them 
forever. The influx of the foreign element suggests the lead- 
ing cause of absenteeism. Those who need the most watching 
are of alien parentage, as yet novices in the English language, 
speaking chiefly a foreign tongue. There is also a large class 
of native children, whose parents, being illiterate immigrants, 
do not yet appreciate the advantages of education. 

But four parents have been prosecuted and fined during the 
year. Instead of brandishing the penalties of the law, we have 
kept them in the background, and urged mainly the great 
advantages of education. These persuasions are, however, 
sometimes enforced by the delicate hint that we desire to avoid 
the painful duty of prosecution which must follow any and 
every case of willful and open defiance of the law, As will be 
seen by the following report, the prosecution of the employer 
and three parents in one town, resulted in promptly bringing 
seventy children to school. 

It was a very gratifying fact that the superintendent of one 
of the largest factories in the State, after being prosecuted for 
the employment of children who had not received the required 
schooling, and being bound over to the Superior Court, should 
have the manliness to write to the Agent of the Board : " The 
legal measures you took were right and proper, as you used 
every other means in your power, and the law as the last 
resort. From this time, you may be assured, I shall use my 



26 

best efforts to comply with the law — and without the law, I 
think the parents would have defeated me in getting their 
children to school, but they now find that they are liable as 
well as myself, and I shall have their cooperation in bringing 
about the desired result. I shall be pleased to see you at any 
time, and have your advice and suggestions in regard to 
educating the children." The sincerity of this declaration was 
evinced by the order promptly given to the overseers, " enforce 
the law for the schooling of children, even if its observance 
should stop the mill." If this superintendent was the greatest 
sinner, he now bids fair to be the best saint in our " canon" of 
employers of children. 

Whatever may be true in monarchical governments, in our 
country there is every motive to kindness and conciliation in 
the execution of this law. Our plan is truly democratic, for 
its entire management is by the people and for the people, 
through school officers chosen by the people and responsible 
to the people, and hence commands popular sympathy. It is 
not pressed upon the people by some higher power, but is their 
own work, embodying their judgment and preferences. The 
old form of compulsory education which existed in Connecticut 
for more than a hundred and fifty years was not forced upon 
the people as "subjects." It was rather a living organism, of 
which they as "sovereigns" proudly claimed the paternity, 
growing up with their growth and recognized as the source of 
their strength and prosperity. After the utmost use of kind- 
ness, tact, and persuasion, and every effort to awaken a dor- 
mant parental pride, and showing that education will promote 
their children's thrift and happiness through life, we find that 
such persuasions are the more effective when it is understood 
that the sanctions of the law might be employed. We have 
used the right to enforce mainly as an argument to persuade. 
As thus used, we know in Connecticut that our law has been 
a moral force. It is itself an effective advocate of education to 
the very class who need it most. It has already accomplished 
great good and brought into the schools many children who 
would otherwise have been absentees. 



FEENCH VIEWS OF AMERICAN SCHOOLS. 

In 1876, the French Government appointed F. Buisson with 
six assistants, to examine and report upon the A merican school 
system. The Commissioners were all educational experts, con- 
nected with the Department of Public Instruction. They 
made a careful inspection of the school exhibits at our Cen- 
tennial Exposition, and visited schools in various states from 
Massachusetts to Missouri. Repeated interviews with Monsieur 
Buisson led me to expect a most valuable Report from an 
observer of such culture, breadth and judgment, aided as he 
was by such eminent associates. This expectation has been 
amply met. Professor Swinton, who has translated a sum- 
mary of this Report, fitly says : " We owe to a Frenchman 
the best statement of the philosophy of American politics. 
And now we shall have to credit to another Frenchman the 
best statement of the philosophy of American education. If 
this Report has not the monumental character of De Tocque- 
ville's Democracy, it is by far the most comprehensive and the 
most valuable analysis thus far made of public instruction in 
the United States. It is our whole free school system, its 
organization, working, methods and results, set forth in its 
glories and in its faults, in its strength and in its weakness, by 
a critic as sympathetic as he is acute. By those who personally 
met the Commissioners, the Report of what they saw and what 
they thought of what they saw, has been awaited with lively 
interest. Well, we have at last after two years the Compte 
rendu of their mission embodied in a great octavo of some 700 
pages, published in Paris under the auspices of the French 
Ministry of Public Instruction. The mere outlay that must 
have attended the mission and the publication of so costly a 
volume, enriched with plates, plans, etc., is a marked compli- 
ment to American education." 

In condensing the following statements so as to read freely, 
I have modified the language of the writer for the sake of brev- 
ity. If the rhetoric has suffered, the thought is retained. 

A republican government needs the whole power of educa- 
tion, said Montesquieu. This sentiment never found a. fitter 



28 

illustration than in the United States. If any people ever used 
this " power of education," or united its destinies to the develop- 
ment of its schools, or made public instruction the supreme 
guarantee of its liberties, the condition of its prosperity, the 
safeguard of its institutions, that is most assuredly the people of 
the United States. This role assigned to the school in social 
life has long been the most characteristic feature which foreign- 
ers have observed in American customs. This solicitude for 
the education of youth grows with the growth of the country, 
enters more and more into public opinion, and is incorporated 
in more decisive acts. What in the beginning might seem a 
burst of enthusiasm has gradually assumed the force of a pro- 
found conviction. No longer the work of philanthropists, or 
of religious societies, it has become a public service for which 
states, cities and towns include in their ordinary taxes sums 
which no country in the world had hitherto thought of conse- 
crating to education. So far from restricting itself to ele- 
mentary education, this generosity extends so as to provide 
free institutions of superior secondary instruction. Public 
opinion approves, nay, enacts these sacrifices, so clear has it 
become to all eyes that the future of the American people will 
be what its schools make it. 

Many causes conspire to give the American school this 
unique importance. At first it was the influence of the Pro- 
testant element. The early settlers of New England knew of 
no grander duty, or more precious privilege than reading the 
Bible. Holding ignorance to be barbarism, they early enacted 
that each town shall have a school and that each family shall 
instruct its children. In proportion as their government be- 
came democratic, that which at first was only a religious duty 
became also a political necessity. Where everything depends 
on the will of the people, that will must be enlightened, at "the 
risk of utter ruin. Education, useful elsewhere, is here 
essential. Universal suffrage means universal education or 
demagogy. 

This country is peopled by the constant immigration of men 
of every race, class, and religion, who have little in common 
but the desire to better their condition. The mixed and ignor- 
ant crowds who form the bulk of this immigration tend to 



29 

group themselves according to their nationality. Hence they 
need to be Americanized as soon as possible. The Irish, Ger- 
man, French, Scandinavians and Spaniards must not desire to 
constitute themselves a nation in the nation, but these immi- 
grants must themselves be the American nation and make their 
boast of it. What is the instrument of this marvellous trans- 
formation ? What institution has so infused the American 
blood into these thousands of colonists, who have hardly had 
time to forget Europe ? It is the public school, and its useful- 
ness in this direction alone justifies its cost. Suppose that 
instead of these public institutions, the new itamigrants could 
find only private schools, all would be changed. Bach would 
follow his own ideas and customs, each group would constitute 
itself apart, perpetuating its language, traditions, creed, its 
ancient national spirit and also its own prejudices. Instead of 
accustoming the child to a healthful contact with conflicting 
opinions, the school would be a confessional, the distinction of 
rich and poor, of the child that pays and the charity pupil 
would perpetuate and pronounce itself. It is a capital fact for 
America, thanks to daily contact in the public schools, that 
the antipathy of the white to the colored child has begun to 
yield. And the United States without this fusion of raceSj 
without unity of language, without the equality of social 
classes, without the mutual tolerance of all the sects, above all, 
-without the ardent love of their new country and its institu- 
tions, would that be the United States at all ? All that this 
country has become and is now, is literally due to the public 
school. 

In proportion as a nation advances, the dangers which the 
school is to avert go on increasing. For this reason they 
redouble their efforts and liberality for schools. As the native 
population does not increase as fast as the foreign or mixed 
population, the time may come when the American element, 
the native Yankee^ will be in the minority. Hence the United 
States omit no measure fitted to imbue the new population 
with the American spirit and so assimilate them that they shall 
seize and make the national traditions their own. 

The Profession of Teaching in the United States. — ^In France a 
person enters the career of teaching with the view of creating 



30 

for himself a stable and permanent position. Those who 
abandon it before obtaining their retiring pension form the 
exception. The young beginner expects to live and die a 
teacher, and as each year adds to his previous experience, the 
time comes when, possessed of adequate theoretical and prac- 
tical knowledge, he is able to discipline his class methodically 
and successfully. 

Not at all thus is it in the United States. The profession of 
teacher seems to be a sort of intermediate stage in one's career 
— a stage at which the young woman awaits an establishment 
suited to her tastes, and the young man a more lucrative posi- 
tion. For many young people, this transitory profession simply 
furnishes the means of continuing their studies. Few male 
teachers remain more than five years in the service ; and, if 
the lady teachers show a longer term, it is not to be forgotten 
that marriage is usually the end of their desires, and that, once 
married, they almost always resign their positions. It has 
thus come to pass, by the mere force of circumstances, that 
the school authorities have been led not only to establish 
various regulations for the application of school laws, but also 
to lay down detailed courses of study containing the subjects 
to be taught in each kind of school, in each class, often in each 
division, and this for each term, if not for each month in the 
3^ear. The time-tables in schools that are at all regularly 
attended are fixed in advance, the text-books are chosen by 
the school board ; and finally, school manuals, often of great 
value, are furnished as a vade mecum^ from which teachers 
may derive information as to methods and the various details 
of daily work. 

Time-Tables. — A class in an American public school, even in 
the cities, comprises at least three divisions or sections, and in 
some classes with not more than forty-five pupils, five sections 
are found. But while in France it is a principle not to go 
beyond three divisions, and to bring these together as frequently 
as possible in collective lessons, such as reading, writing, history, 
geography, object lessons, and dictation — whereby these exer- 
cises receive the amount of time required for some degree of 
fullness in the development of the subject, — the American 
system rarely admits a combination of this kind. Each divi- 



81 

sion has its own separate lessons in the different branches, with 
an occasional exception in the case of oral spelling and object 
lessons. Thus in a session of two and one-half hours of actual 
work, we have counted in the primary schools and in the 
country schools as many as fourteen distinct exercises — a 
number reduced to seven in the grammar schools; but there 
is always one-half at least of the pupils that remain unem- 
ployed, while the others receive their lessons or go through 
their "recitation," as it is called in the United States. This 
everlasting coming and going of study and of recitation gives 
rise to a perpetual movement in the class-room. 

Moreover, as monitors are never employed, it comes to pass 
that a very limited period of time can be given to the lessons, 
and even this time is diminished by the frequent changes of 
place, for generally, in recitation, the pupils leave their seats 
and arrange themselves standing, along the class-room wall, 
and then return to their seats during the fifteen minutes or 
half hour of "study," their place in the meantime being taken 
by others. In many a time-table we have seen lessons in 
reading, arithmetic and history reduced to ten and even to 
five minutes, and, in like manner, general lessons in botany 
and physiology cut down to five minutes in the first grade of 
a grammar school. 

What is to be expected from such a procedure? It is in 
vain that the best arranged programmes are put into the hands 
of teachers, or that the most valuable pedagogic directions are 
laid down for their guidance — their intelligence and their devo- 
tion must both be foiled by the vices of such a system. 

The time-tables — rarer, by the way, than any other docu- 
ments — appear to us the weak part in the organization of 
American schools. There is nothing to indicate that most 
important matter, to wit, the work of those divisions which 
the teacher has not immediately in hand. The pupils are 
"studying," they told us, but what are they studying? Undi- 
rected and unwatched, we have our fears as to this "studying." 
Of course, there must be a great abuse of copying work, that 
mechanical task so justly proscribed in France; and worse 
still, it cannot be possible, owing to the lack of time, to develop 
the reasoning and observing powers of the children. Instruc- 



82 

tion, reduced as it is, per force, to dry recitations or mechanical 
exercises, is barren in the lower grades, where this evil is the 
worst, while in the higher grades it cannot but be fettered, and 
must produce results below what might be expected from so 
choice a body of teachers, and so excellent an organization. 

School Manuals. — Every one of the various courses of study 
that we examined has joined to it, by way of complement, 
pedagogic directions for the use of teachers. Prepared, as 
these are, by competent persons, they bring the attention of 
teachers to the carrying out of the courses of study, the mode 
of conducting recitations and the nature and aim of practical 
exercises; in a word, they give the school system a unity tbat 
secures the regular progress of instruction, while it renders 
inspection more effective. 

Country Scliools. — Owing to the representations of certain 
enthusiastic travelers, a most lovely idea of the American 
rural school-house is common in France : it is pictured as a 
nest among flowers. Thither resort, each morning, on prancing 
ponies, red-cheeked lassies and lads, grave and proud and 
respectful to their young mates as our cavaliers of the good 
old times. The mistress — herself young — smilingly receives 
them at the entrance, o'ershadowed by great trees. How 
remote is the reality from this picture, this charming exception 
to a state of things still in its rude beginnings ! We traversed 
the vast plains where the husbandman struggles against an 
unconquerable vegetation, and the still half-wild valleys in the 
regions of iron, coal and oil, — and it was not our lot to find 
any such school idyl. 

In the country, stone or brick school-houses form the excep- 
tion ; frame buildings, so cold in winter and so scorching in 
summer, are much more numerous, and the log-house has not 
yet disappeared. In the most flourishing States, what com- 
plaints are made against defective school accommodations ! 
Let it not be said that, in describing the rural schools of the 
United States, we have sought out exceptional cases ; we have 
tried our best to do justice to that great country, but we cannot 
conceal the fact that in the rural districts the school-houses are 
poor affairs and poorly equipped. Thus in Pennsylvania and 
New Hampshire, out of twenty-two teachers' reports, fourteen 



33 

stated that the class-rooms were absolutely destitute of every- 
thing in the way of means for visual instruction, that is, there 
were neither maps nor blackboards ; two schools had one map 
each ; one school possessed an old globe ; other schools no 
blackboards and no reading books ; a single school was fur- 
nished with suitable apparatus. 

The Courses of Study in Ungraded Schools are still in the tenta- 
tive period, not to say in a state of chaos. Some are too suc- 
cinct and barely outlined ; others reflect the personal predilec- 
tions of the teacher and show that ingenuous pedantry so often 
found associated with total inexperience. Sometimes a good 
deal less than the required course is done ; sometimes it is 
greatly exceeded ; such studies as history, music, composition, 
drawing and book-keeping being taken up, and in some cases 
algebra, physiology, geology, natural philosophy, and rhetoric 
even. 

The worst evil from which rural schools suffer is irregularity 
of attendance. Teachers and superintendents bitterly complain. 
of this. As a partial remedy, and as a means of allowing chil- 
dren to attend school without wholly depriving parents of their 
help, some States have lately established a number of " half- 
time" classes, in which attendance is reduced to a single session 
per day. This measure has everywhere been followed by good 
results, and it would perhaps be advantageous to introduce it 
into our French system, for the summer term at least, and in 
the case of the older pupils. 

The Country School-houses are still in many instances built of 
wood, as are many of the finest dwellings, but they are frame 
buildings well put together, painted, and conveniently lighted. 
More frequently the constructions are of pressed brick with 
stone trimmings and slate roofs. You have only to see these 
coquettish school-houses, in the midst of vast lawns, shaded 
with fine trees and surrounded by palings, to judge of the place 
which the school holds in public opinion. It is indeed a 
national institution, devoted to the education of "boys whose 
votes will decide the fate of the Eepublic, and of girls, one of 
whom may be the mother of the president of the United States." 

What specially distinguishes the country school-house of the 
United States from that of Europe is the absence of lodgings 



34 

for master or mistress. Nowhere in tbe United States is this 
arrangement found. It is an evidence of a state of things not 
without its unfortunate side: the teacher is engaged for a year 
simply ; he is paid by the month, and most frequently his 
certificate has but a limited duration. Under these circum- 
stances he but comes and goes ; when he is not a resident of 
the locality, he takes board for the school term and has nothing 
but a study or office in the school-house. 

School-houses of New York City. — In the school buildings in 
New York City everything is sacrificed to the reception hall 
with its vast platform, fitted to hold a desk, several arm-chairs 
and a piano. In the hall it is that the stranger visiting the 
school is received. The movement of five or six hundred chil- 
dren entering in good order, to the sound of the piano, from 
six or eight adjoining rooms, while the folding doors opening 
below, show the smallest scholars ranked on steps — all this 
makes a fine show ; but it is purchased too dearly, if the studies 
and the health of the children are to suffer thereby, as we can- 
not but think that they must. 

The Kindergarten. — Infant Schools, which in France precede 
the primary school, form no part of the public school system 
of the United States. The few infant schools which exist are 
private establishments, or else free institutions, without legal 
recognition. Nevertheless, since 1871, Kindergartens on the 
Froebel plan have been attached to some of the public schools 
of Boston and St. Louis, and these establishments are every 
year gaining ground in a quite marked manner in all the States. 
The obstacles still encountered by the Kindergarten arise partly 
from American domestic manners, and partly from the prejudice 
which this German importation arouses in the minds of certain 
superintendents. 

Woman in America is much less employed than she is in 
France, Belgium, and England, in industrial employments that 
take her from her household. "Home, Sweet Home" is for 
the Anglo-Saxon a species of worship, and in this sphere the 
wife is to maintain order, peace and happiness, by attending 
to her husband and children. It is not to be thought of that 
she should go to a place of employment in the morning and 
stay there till evening. The hearth must not be cold nor the 



85 

house forsaken. And this is the motive that withdraws married 
women from public school-teaching. For what would become 
of her "home," and who would take care of her husband and 
children, when she was at school — generally considerably 
removed from her abode ? In America the mother is the first 
instructor of her children, and generally she teaches them to 
read before sending them to public school. 

In the Kindergarten exhibits at Philadelphia we noticed 
everywhere the application of Froebel's ideas, designed to 
interest children while amusing them, to excite and direct their 
attention, to accustom them to represent or put together objects 
of their own devising. 

But with Americans the practical spirit is too strong for 
them readily to accept what does not offer an immediate result. 
One of the objections they urge against the Kindergarten is 
that it does not teach reading, writing and arithmetic (the three 
E's). Indeed, these institutions are not likely to meet full 
acceptance in the United States until it shall be shown that 
the general training they give to very young children will 
induce rapid school-progress, until it shall be shown that chil- 
dren bring from the Kindergarten a certain stock of practical 
notions. Besides, there is the question of expense, and how 
can $16 be gotten for the education of a child of from 3 to 7 
years of age, when this costs only $10 or $12 for a pupil of 
from 7 to 10 years of age ? If the Kindergarten has made its 
way at but a few points in the United States, it is the object of 
an active advocacy and has the sympathy of eminent educators. 
The application it has already received tends to free the Froebel 
system of any too exclusive form, and to adapt it to the wants 
and the genius of the country. This same result we should 
seek to attain in France, with the view of infusing life into our 
infant schools, and awakening the faculties of the child, instead 
of putting them to sleep by merely mechanical modes of pro- 
cedure. 

Reading. — The reading of the French language certainly 
presents sufficient difficulty ; but the extreme complication 
and the numerous anomalies of English pronunciation render 
the teaching of reading in that tongue a still more delicate 



36 

problem. Hence, in the United States, great ingenuity has 
been expended in the discovery of practical and speedy meth- 
ods. Germany has furnished many plans which have been 
ingeniously modified and applied. 

The ancient alphabetic method is now scarcely used at all in 
good schools. It is the longest and most monotonous method 
— and it is the method best known in France. This method 
was not represented at the Exposition. Even in the country 
schools in the United States, there are not on the average 
twenty in a hundred that use the old spelling plan, and in 
many States it is not employed at all. Manifestly public 
opinion has pronounced for the new methods. 

In the phonic method, imported from Germany, the teacher 
drills the child first in the pronunciation of the sounds of the 
language, then in distinguishing the signs by which these are; 
represented. He thus proceeds from the sound to the symbol, 
from the letter uttered to the letter figured, in place of passing 
from the name of the letter to its phonic value, which is often 
very difficult. However, this method, applied strictly and in 
its whole scope, assumes that, as is the case of German, a given 
letter always corresponds with a given sound, and this is not 
the case with the English language. Hence many objections 
have been raised to the purely phonic method, which indeed 
had to be modified into the word method or the phonetic 
method. 

The phonic method, even when aided by all the American 
improvements of the word method, will always meet with grave 
objections. Excellent for German and Spanish, in which a 
letter has rarely more than a single power, it encounters in 
French, and still more so in English, anomalies resulting from 
the constant use of the same sign for different sounds, or of two 
different signs for the same sound, not to speak of useless 
double consonants, silent letters, etc. This consideration has 
led to the invention, by Dr. Edwin Leigh, of a method based 
on the same principle, but which in its application has recourse 
to typographical innovations. In many schools the teachers 
make use of the Leigh method in connection with the word 
method, and this is called the eclectic method, for in America 
every new device assumes a pretentious name. 



37 

In most of the schools visited by us, special importance is 
attached to class exercises in pronunciation. The lady teachers 
throw a certain ardor into the work of articulation, and, if need 
be, they show the play of the vocal organs in the production 
of a given sound or element, as for instance th hard, or guttural 
r, etc. It is to be desired that this were done in France, and 
that our teachers appreciated the utility of this vocal gym- 
nastic, as bearing on reading or even on spelling. No pains 
are spared to give the pupils a correct pronunciation, not only 
in the primary but also in the most advanced classes. The 
master reads in a loud intelligible voice a passage from the 
Eeader suited to the grade. The pupils repeat it in the same 
tone and with the same inflections. This is one of the liveliest 
and most curious exercises in an American school, and one 
which we have often witnessed with the keenest interest. The 
preceding account proves what importance is attached to read- 
ing in the United States. The method employed, very gener- 
ally a rational one, secures the speedy acquisition of reading, 
and inspires pupils with, the love of reading ; this is, doubtless, 
one of the reasons why there is no other country where people 
read better or read more. 

(The two following recommendations to French teachers, 
drawn from the Commissioners' observations of American meth- 
ods of teaching reading, merit the special attention of school 
officers and teachers of Connecticut). 1. To render primary 
instruction in reading not only more attractive^ hut more profitable, 
hy enlivening it by tneans of object lessons, and carrying it forward 
in connection with writing and rudimentary drawing. 2. To give 
■more attention to pronunciation, delivery, emphasis, and expressive 
reading. 

The Mother Tongue. — The courses of study and the directions 
for teaching the English language reveal everywhere a truly 
practical spirit, and are full of judicious considerations. It is 
with entire justice that distinction is made between language 
training and grammatical study. It is readily understood that 
the English language, in which the laws of concord amount to 
scarcely anything, may content itself with this practical study. 
French, which deals more in rules and orthographic details, 
requires more attention to grammar. ' , 

3 



38 

Two abuses strike us in the numerous papers on grammar 
and analysis that came under our eye. 1. The complication of 
parsing and analysis. In France also we carry written parsing 
too far, for everywhere routine acts in the same way and trans- 
forms into a mechanical exercise what, within proper limits, 
ought to be a valuable intellectual discipline. 2. Subtlety of 
distinction and complicated terminology. In grammatical in- 
struction it seems to the Americans that the simplicity of Eng- 
lish syntax ought to be made up for by a lavish use of scholastic 
distinctions, which, unfortunately, correspond to nothing in the 
construction of language. Dictation exercises which occupy 
so prominent a place in our French schools, are rare in the 
United States. 

A feature that deserves unreserved praise, and which we 
found in the better schools in the United States, is the develop- 
ment of the inventive faculty of the pupil by means of compo- 
sition-exercises outlined in the most general manner. Even in 
the primary schools the teachers are beginning to require the 
pupils to write out an account of what is represented in a 
picture in the text-book or in a chromo placed before them. 
This is a capital exercise, and one that we cannot too strongly 
recommend for adoption in our French schools. The task con- 
sists simply in practicing the scholar in observing attentively, 
in telling what he sees, and in telling this in an orderly manner. 

Geography has long been a favorite study in American 
schools. It could not be otherwise in a country that has so 
many reasons for devoting itself to this science, — the immense 
extent of its territory, the great diversity in its phyiscal con- 
ditions, resources and population, the importance of its com- 
mercial relations with the whole world, not to mention the 
circumstances of its origin, whence it results that no land is 
absolutely foreign to it. 

In response to a well understood want, geographical instruc- 
tion early assumed a methodical form : this form, without being 
original, has still an American character, something national 
and sui generis. The old mode of instruction, bristling with 
repulsive nomenclatures which in nowise spoke to the mind or 
the imagination, and which merel}^ loaded the memory, is still 
doubtless found in a multitude of rural schools ; for in speak- 



39 

ing of the United States in general, it must never be forgotten 
that there is a distance of nearly half a century between the 
country school, properly so-called, and the town or city school. 

One of the happiest symptoms that strike the attention at the 
slightest examination is that geographical study now almost 
always begins where it ought to begin — hy makmg the child 
acquainted with the neighborhood^ hy a plan of the class room^ the 
school-house^ the street^ the village ; in a word, a knowledge of the 
points of the compass, not merely on the map and as a matter 
of definition, but in nature, in a given locality. This very fact 
is an indication justifying the belief that geographical reform 
has penetrated deeply into educational practice, for it is gener- 
ally by such beginnings that this reform ends. It is more 
difficult to bring about a rectification in the manner of teaching 
these rudiments than it is to perfect subsequent instruction. 
And that this progress has been made in the United States is 
manifest in every way, — by the text-books, the courses of study, 
and the numberless specimens of work done by tlie scholars. 
The strong point in all this new geographical training is that it 
is really a series of object lessons, that it begins with the child's 
own stock of knowledge instead of overwhelming him with 
abstractions and definitions. 

Without overlooking the progress already made, we received 
the general impression that the new methods have not yet pen- 
etrated into the heart of primary teaching ; they are known 
and applied sometimes in an admirable manner in the larger 
cities and in elite schools, but they are still unknown in most 
country schools, and between these two extremes are thou- 
sands of schools which as yet have hardly begun to feel the 
influence of the new ideas, and thousands that have the letter 
without the spirit thereof. The following features of Ameri- 
can geographical teaching are recommended as worthy of imi- 
tation : — 

L I'd begin with the synthetic method^ which, starting with local 
geography, progressively enlarges the horizon of study, but not to 
dwell too long on local geography ; to give pupils notions of general 
geography and cosmography as soon as they are able to receive them. 

II. To practice pupils early in map drawing from memory and 
in reproducing on the blackboards the proximate forms of countries. 



40 

III. To insist on the descriptive part, without going out of the 
way to seek the picturesque, and paying particular attention to 
imparting correct ideas on the relief of countries, their general fea- 
tures, the nature of the soil, climate, production, etc., above all, great 
attention to what the English call '"'"physiography. '" 

Arithmetic. — In American schools nothing is equal to the care 
with which the child is trained in the intelligent application 
of the four ground rules. No sooner does the pupil know the 
simplest numbers, 1, 2, 8, that is the a b c oi calculation, than 
means are found for setting him to work in combining them 
bj addition, subtraction, multiplication'and division, in such a 
way as to bring into play all the faculties of attention, reflec- 
tion and judgment. Beyond this first stage, the teaching of 
arithmetic generally quits the good way we have indicated, 
and ceases to be the supreme agency of intellectual culture. 
It seems as though the sole aim now were to impart hastily 
the practical means of resolving this or that kind of operation. 

The principles that might light up the progress of the pupil 
and exercise his wits are almost voluntarily left aside. He 
commits to memory how, in a given case, he should state a 
proposition, what rule he should follow — whether or not he has 
learnt the why — and he applies the rule, with confidence and 
in a routine manner to exercises similar to that which served 
as an example. Practice before theory — such is the idea that 
generally prevails. And the method of proceeding is gener- 
ally as follows : The teacher, or one of the most advanced 
pupils, sets forth on the blackboard each point in an operation 
to be learned, while the pupils follow, verifying in their book 
the course indicated ; then the latter reproduce on their slates 
the same work, retain the rule by heart and apply it, point by 
point, to new examples. The rationale of the procedure is 
given only in case the curiosity or good sense of the scholar 
calls it out. 

Great efforts are now making to bring back arithmetical 
teaching to a more rational way, to ally in just measure theory 
and practice, by a recurrence to the principles of analysis as 
well as of synthesis. By the solution of a good many prob- 
lems of the same kind, dealing with quite small numbers the 
pupil is led to formulate for himself the method to be pursued 



41 

in the exercises assigned to him. His memory is then not the 
only faculty brought into play ; he reasons and draws conclus- 
ions ; his good sense develops, he acquires correct language, 
acquires a taste for what he does, and gains strength for greater 
difficulties. Arithmetic has its principles and its axioms, just 
as geometry has, and it is by setting them forth, by develop- 
ing them logically that the pupil's intellect is sharpened and 
his judgment exercised and himself fitted for the intelligent 
practice of calculation. [The following American methods 
recommended to French educators, need to be more generally 
applied by our teachers. 

I. To prepare children for the study of arithmetic hy the use of 
the abacus^ without prolonging this exercise too much. 

II. To extend the use of mental calculation^ as well in the form 
of operations carried on in the head as in that of the rapid solution 
of such problems. 

III. Not to he afraid of practicing children from an early age in 
mental calculation^ fractions^ complex rtumhers^ the metric system — 
the whole presented not in the rigorous and definitive order of ulterior 
instruction, hut under the common, elementary, analogical, and, so 
to speak, provisional form suited to a first survey of the subject. 

Drawing in the Public Schools. — Six years ago drawing was 
taught only in certain special schools, and that in a very imper- 
fect manner: there were no models, no methods, no materials, 
no masters. A committee was formed, and in a few years a 
whole system of instruction was devised. In some states, Draw- 
ing has been made obligatory ; four methods, strictly graded 
and completing one another, bring the arts of designing within 
the reach of pupils of all ages ; public expositions are increas- 
ing ; all regular teachers are put in the way of teaching this 
branch of education ; a normal school of art, to which flock 
pupils from all parts, has been founded and a fruitful emulation 
has arisen among various cities. If we take into account that 
these are the fruits of a few years of trial, it must be acknowl- 
edged that such remarkable results were never before obtained 
in so short a time. The following are the recommendations 
made on the subject of drawing : 

I. To commence drawing as soon as the child enters school, hy 
slate or blackboard exercises, using the aid of squares or better style 



42 

of points regularly -placed in such a way as to leave to the pupil the 
drawing of the lines. 

IT. To advance gradually from the straight line to elementary 
geometrical figures, then to more complex combinations, and so to 
industrial and ornamental drawing. 

III. Especially to practice the eye hy elementary studies in per- 
spective, hy the recognition of distances hy sight, and hy the ohserva- 
tion and comparison of for m,s. 

lY. To proscribe drawing by mere fancy or chance, which falsi- 
fies the taste. 

Y. To organize for pupil-teachers methodical courses of drawing 
suited to their future wants. 

High Schools. — Everywhere High Schools are the special 
object of attention on the part of School Boards and towns 
having over 500 families — say from 2,000 to 2,500 inhabitants, 
do not shrink from taxing themselves for their suitable accom- 
modation. In most cases, these schools are for both sexes. 
No part of the American school system is more essentially 
national than are the High Schools, no part of the system pre- 
sents features that are more original, or, in some respects, 
further removed from European ideas, no part of the system is 
worthy of more profound study. Peruse the course of study 
in these High Schools ; think of those children of workmen and 
work-women passing four or five years in adorning, strength- 
ening and cultivating their minds by studies that everywhere 
else are reserved for the well-to-do classes, and tell us if these 
institutions do not bear the very seal and impress of American 
civilization. Need one be astonished, then, at the frank pride 
with which the American citizen speaks of these schools? Has 
he not a right to be proud when, by sure documentary evi- 
dence, he shows us the son and the daughter of the humblest 
artisan so mentally elevated that between them and the privi- 
leged of fortune no difference of culture, no trace of intellect- 
ual inferiority, is to be discovered ? If it is glorious to see 
society freely giving to the poor the benefit of a public school 
education, is it not a still more extraordinary spectacle to 
behold a nation that deems it would wrong its humblest citi- 
zens were their children denied any opportunity for the full 
and free expansion of their minds? Here is a country where 



43 

there are hundreds of free Highi Schools, on the same footing as 
the most primary establishments. They are of one body with 
the common schools, are administered by the same authorities, 
supported by the same funds, and intended for the same popu- 
lation ; and yet, instead of being limited to the strictly essential 
studies, to the minimum of knowledge required to take children 
out of the ofiScial category of the illiterate, these upper schools 
are established on the basis of what may be called the higher 
instruction. They are not professional schools, nor are 
they bastard imitations of the classical college, nor yet low 
grade universities — they are in the fullest sense popular 
schools, intended to give the people the best, purest and 
loftiest results of liberal education. They open up no special 
pursuit — they lead to all pursuits, without exception and with- 
out distinction. They do not make an engineer, an architect, 
or a physician, an}'' more than they make an artisan or a mer- 
chant, but they form bright, intelligent youths trained to stud- 
ies of every kind, qualified to select for themselves among the 
various professions, and skilled to succeed therein. One grad- 
uate will enter the university, another will go into business ; 
there will be diflferences of occupation among them, but there 
will be no inequality of education. 

So far as social equality can possibly be reached on this earthy it 
is attained by the American High School. In other countries it is 
to be feared that the children of different classes of society, 
though brought together for a while in the public school, must 
soon find themselves separated by the whole distance between 
their respective families ; indeed, it must be so, since one child 
enters on his apprenticeship and thus stops short in his intel- 
lectual development at the very time when the other is just 
beginning his. In the United States every effort is made to 
delay and to diminish this separation, to carry as far as possi- 
ble, and as high as possible, that common instruction which 
effac3s the distinction of rich and poor. 

If it be true that the prosperit}' of a republic is in the direct 
ratio of the replenishment of its middle classes, of the abun- 
dance and facility in the indefinite recruiting of these classes, 
then the High School of the United States, whatever it may 
cost, is the best investment of capital that can possibly be made. 



44 

[Of the conclusions reached by the Commissioners, the fol- 
lowing are the most practical and suggestive to Americans.] 

Summary of Conclusions. — 1. The common schools of the 
United States are essentially a national institution ; they are 
dear to the people, respected by all, created, sustained and 
enriched by a unanimous spirit of patriotism which for a cen- 
tury has shown no falling off; in a word, they are deemed the 
very source of public prosperity, as, par excellence^ the conserv- 
ative and protective institution in their democratic govern- 
ment and republican manners. 

2. The school organization is rigorously municipal. The 
law simply establishes as a principle the necessity of public 
instruction, leaving to each community to provide for its own 
needs in its own way. 

3. The higher direction and the inspection of the public 
schools are confided to elective boards. From this peculiarity 
arise various results, as, for instance, the frequent renewing of 
the Boards and Superintendents, the unfortunate influence of 
political prejudices and local interests, the liability to sudden 
changes in the school organization, and, finally, the necessity 
imposed on the people to heep themselves informed on school ques- 
tions, as matters on which they have constantly to vote. 

4. The public schools are in all grades absolutely feee : the 
abolition of fees was in every State the signal of the new birth 
of the public schools ; it brought into these establishments the 
children of all classes of the population, and constantly tends 
to bring them nearer and nearer together. 

5. The public schools are absolutely unsectarian. 

6. Compulsory education, made matter of law in some States, 
has doubtless aided the development of common school instruc- 
tion. The results thus far ascertained are not very striking ; 
and besides it is' impossible either to pass or to carry out the 
measure in the very region where its urgency is most pressing, 
that is, in the South. In general, the most practical form that 
compulsion has assumed is the hunting up of vagabond chil- 
dren or the adoption of various measures to force them into 
school, to begin with, and then, if need be, to transfer them to 
reform schools or other special establishments. 

7. Public school instruction in the United States does not 



45 

form a course of study apart, strictly limited to a minimum or 
completely distinct from classical instruction ; it comprises 
three degrees — the primary, the grammar school, and the high 
school course — sometimes combined in a single school, and 
again subdivided among three different schools, but in all cases 
connecting with the higher education, whether literary or profes- 
sional, so that a child of the working class has the opportunity 
of gratuitously continuing his education as far as his tastes and 
aptitudes permit. 

8. The training of teachers is now almost universally regarded 
as the essential condition of sound, popular education, and the 
number of State Normal Schools is rapidly increasing. 

9. As the career of teaching is often taken up merely pro- 
visionally by young men or women who do not intend to con- 
tinue in the field, there results a very grievous instability in 
the teaching force — though it should be observed that there is 
some compensation for this evil in the fact that it draws into 
the work a large number of young schoolmasters full of ardor, 
equipped beyond the needs of the common school course, and 
untrammelled by the spirit of routine. 

10. The coeducation of the sexes is the rule in the American 
public school system, and except in some of the great cities is 
becoming more and more the rule. The results of this usage 
are generally represented as excellent in both the moral and 
the intellectual aspect. The only or at least the chief objec- 
tions heard, are based on the excess of labor which the system 
imposes on young girls. 

11. From these causes and from the marked taste of Amer- 
icans for innovation and new departures, it has come to pass 
that the schools of the United States show a diversity of organ- 
ization, and a multiplicity of forms, courses of study, text- 
books, and methods, which result in much experimentation 
and a lamentable loss of time ; but which, by leaving a great 
deal to the free choice and responsibility of teachers and local 
authorities, interests them directly and personally in the suc- 
cess of the school. 

12. Thence result, also, extraordinary efforts and boundless 
liberality directed to giving the schools, both in the construc- 
tion of the buildings and in the establishment and maintenance 



46 

of the institutions, an air of comfort, of amplitude, and almost 
luxury, which is not merely a satisfaction to municipal pride, 
but is mainly the means of giving the public schools the prestige 
necessary to bring within their fold all classes of the population 
without distinction. 

13. The great publicity given to the Eeports of Committees 
and Superintendents, the interest taken by the people in school 
statistics, and the beautiful and simple organization of the 
National Bureau of Education do more for the growth and 
improvement of educational institutions than could possibly 
be accomplished by the orders of any administrative authority, 
even though clothed with the most extensive power. 

14. If, with all these educational facilities, the United States 
still show a considerable proportion of illiterate population, 
the explanation is found, first, in the fact that the whole South 
is yet a region to be conquered for public school instruction, 
and secondly, because immigration is incessantly bringing in 
a fresh contingent of illiterate adults. 

15. The educational methods of the United States are in 
general distinguished from our own by two characteristics, 
which may by turns be either advantages or defects. On the 
one hand they tend to become essentially objective, synthetic, 
analogical, active. On the other hand, they are eminently 
practical, being planned and practiced with reference to the 
wants of life and to direct utility. 

16. And so in the choice of subjects to be taught, the 
American system is marked by the selection of the most indis- 
pensable matters, of the most rapid methods, of the most 
positive successes, of those advantages which if not the most 
important for mental improvement, have the most direct bear- 
ing on the present or future interest of the pupil, — an aim 
which is very well in principle, but which, when too exclusively 
sought, stamps study with an empirical and utilitarian impress, 
gives a narrowness to education, and to a certain extent cramps 
the mind itself. 

17. As regards methods of teaching, the American system rec- 
ommends itself by a frequent appeal to the pupil's own powers, 
to his intellectual and moral spontaneity. It cares less for the 
logical order of ideas than it does for the natural order of 



47 

impressions; it leaves a large independence to the teacher and 
a still larger to the scholar, — whence an extreme diversity in 
the modes of procedure and a not less striking inequality in 
the results. Many and many a time one is struck with the 
hasty, rapid, almost improvised character of a plan of educa- 
tion which trusts implicitly to good instincts, good sense, and 
good will, which aims ever to address the eye, the memory, the 
imagination, which would thus gain time over the old strictly 
didactic methods, but which by so doing, runs the risk of 
becoming somewhat superficial, and is in danger sometimes of 
dispensing too much with the severe but fruitful labors of 
abstraction and reasoning. 

"We are not of those who, ignorant of the marvellous proofs 
of moral and material vitality which the United States have 
shown, think that we have discovered in this grand body the 
germ of decomposition and prophesy its near ruin. This is 
perhaps the people, of all the earth, which has in its immense 
domains the grandest deposits of natural riches; in its temper- 
ament and character the most powerful motive to action ; in its 
historical traditions the noblest example of energy, efficiency, 
courage and civic honor, and in its institutions the system best 
fitted to favor the rise of liberty, and these are some of the 
forces which ought to resist the toughest trials. But while we 
do not overlook these most promising signs, we do not conceal 
the formidable problems which the country has still to solve. 
The antagonism of races, traditions and interests which brought 
on the bloody conflict between the North and the South, the 
irruption of the blacks into public life, a just but terrible pun- 
ishment of a civic wrong, the difficulty of long maintaining the 
bonds which unite peoples so diverse, spread over a territory 
so immense ; all these are grave questions. These however are 
thrown in the shade by a danger more immediate, and that is 
the alteration, say rather the corruption of political morals, the 
question of elections, and especially the election of President, 
whether this shall be made by the intelligence and virtue of 
the people, or whether it will veer about and become the prey 
of intrigue and corruption. 



. SCHOOL HYGIENE. 

[The following paper by D. F. Lincoln, M.D., of Boston, just published in the 
Eeport of the Board of Education of Massachusetts, was prepared for the benefit 
of teachers and school ofiQcers. While investigating this subject, Dr. Lincoln 
carefully examined many school-houses in Connecticut. No subject is more 
important to teachers and pupils than School Hygiene. This paper is so much 
fuller and abler than the one I had prepared, that I give it in a condensed form 
instead of my unprofessional observations.] 

SITE. 

Dampness is a most serious fault in the site for a school 
building. This may be due to the impervious nature of the 
soil ; a difficulty easily remedied, if the site is elevated, by a 
proper use of drain-pipe and trenches about the house lot. If 
the water cannot be diverted, the site must not be used ; for 
concrete floors will not keep out water from a cellar built in a 
saturated soil. An elevated site is generally preferable to a 
low one, on the ground of better drainage, more abundant sun- 
light, and a freer supply of air. High land, when boggy or 
full of springs of water, is very objectionable. 

The bottom of the cellar ought to be at least three feet 
above the average level of the water in the soil. If this seems 
impracticable, let tile-drain be run around the cellar at the 
depth of its floor, and furnished with a discharge at some- 
lower point. In some cases it will be necessary to place the 
cellar floor at or near the ground level. 

Much complaint is made of the excessive dryness of the air 
in some schools and houses ; but this is a slight fault com- 
pared with the dampness emanating from floors, walls, and 
soil, which has been shown by eminent authority to be pro- 
ductive of consumption, catarrh, and rheumatism. 

In our climate a school-house ought to be so placed as to 
receive the direct rays of the sun in each room during some 
part of every day in the year. Verandas, however necessary 
in more southern latitudes, are not proper in ours. It is 
obvious enough that a room lighted exclusively by northern 
windows, in a wall running east and west, will have a very 
deficient supply of sunlight. It is best to place the house so 
that the corners will indicate the four cardinal points, and the 
faces will look to the southeast, southwest, etc. 



49 



SOME POINTS IN CONSTRUCTION. 

The doors of every school-house of more than one story 
ought to open outward towards the street, to prevent a block 
in case of a panic, such as an alarm of fire occasions. With 
the same view, it is necessary, in the case of a large school, to 
make them at least eight feet wide. The door way should 
always be wider than the stair that leads to it. 

The entries and corridors must be spacious relatively to the 
stairs, especially at the foot of the latter. In large houses, a 
width of ten or twelve feet is required. They should be 
lighted directly from out of doors when possible; and the 
lights should be placed at opposite ends, so as to insure a free, 
natural ventilation, which on many days of the year, even in 
winter, is the best for entries. It is hard to ventilate entries 
that occupy the center of schools ; while entries or corridors 
that possess a natural ventilation furnish a desirable means of 
supplementing the defects of the air in rooms. 

The staircases should be lighted from the outside. There 
must be at least two staircases for a building containing six 
hundred scholars. Spiral stairs are inadmissible, for the steps 
are very narrow next the well, and if the child fall on the stair 
the descent is very steep on that side. Wedge-shaped steps 
are inadmissible for the same reason, though common in private 
houses. Wells are dangerous, if not protected ; the staircases 
should be sheathed ; banisters are totally unnecessary, and the 
rail should be about four feet above the riser. 

A clean, dry cellar is a suitable place for play-rooms, pro- 
vided the sunlight and air enter freely. If the ceiling is high, 
a gymnasium may be placed there, under the same conditions 
as to light and air. ISTo school-room ought to be in a cellar, or 
even partially under ground. 

TENTILATION AND HEATING. 

The requirements under this head are the following : — 

1. Renewal of the air of the room, effected constantly and 
without perceptible draughts, at the rate of at least two thou- 
sand cubic feet per hour for each occupant. 

2. A temperature not exceeding 70° nor falling belpw 64° at 
the level of the head of a person sitting, and not varying more 



60 

than about 4° in different parts of the same room, or at different 
heights within six feet of the floor. 

3. Freedom from noxious elements. 

To effect a sufficient change of air without producing a 
draught, there must be a liberal allowance of space per scholar. 
A small room, as for example, a low-studded parlor of moderate 
size when full of company, can hardly be kept in a comfortable 
condition ; the alternative is between a dangerous draught and 
an excess of heat with stifling closeness. In practice, a room 
containing 250 cubic feet of space per occupant can be readily 
ventilated without draught. Such a room allows 20 square 
feet of floor-space to each pupil, and has a height of 12^ feet. 

In an ordinary school-room there is nothing gained by 
making the ceiling over 14 feet in height: 12 or 13 feet is 
sufficient. In a large hall it is necessary to exceed this for 
acoustic and other reasons. 

Of course, children ought not to sit with wet clothing or feet 
in a cool room. Children who are badly fed will not resist 
cold well ; nor those who are pampered, or prevented from 
getting exercise. And any person, child or adult, may become 
tender and delicate in a short time by accustoming himself to 
an over-heated room. It is very hard, in a changeable climate 
like ours, to avoid the latter evil : in most houses there is 
placed a powerful heating-apparatus, which cannot be made to 
"roar gently" when the weather moderates; and a set of gas- 
burners is used, which raises the temperature several degrees. 
Attention to the temperature of a house, in our climate, implies 
quite as much a care for coolness as for warmth, during the 
changeable spring and autumn weather. And, when it comes 
to the practical working of a school-room, it is very easy 
indeed to let the temperature exceed a reasonable point, but 
requires constant attention to keep it down. An interesting 
lesson may be going on, or a written examination : the mind 
works well, for the time, at a fever-heat; and the temperature 
of 84° may pass quite unnoticed. It is needless to say that 
such a strain upon the system is followed by a period of lassi- 
tude; and a state of lassitude, again, may demand a slightly 
raised temperature. Thus by degrees habits of preference 
for hot rooms may be formed. The teacher may be as uncon- 



51 

scious of the evil as the scholar; indeed, if fatigued she may 
require, or if excited may not notice, an unusual heat. 

The time to correct bad habits in this respect is the begin- 
ning of the school year. Everyone then comes to school with 
a system invigorated by some months of exposure to fresh 
air; and, if care is taken, this vigor, or power of resisting 
cold, may be retained. The teacher may assist by causing 
the children to take frequent exercise, — play, with running 
and shouting, is the best, — and to go out of doors frequently. 
If it rains or snows, windows may be opened a little, while the 
children are engaged in active bodily exercise, such as calis- 
thenics. These intermissions should occur as often as once 
every hour, and last five minutes at a time, or longer. Weakly 
children, those liable to croup or rheumatism or other com- 
plaints arising from exposure, must be protected meanwhile; 
but the fact remains, that the power to perform work, the 
power to generate heat, and the power to resist catching cold, 
are all improved by frequent vigorous use of the muscles and 
lungs. Singing constitutes an excellent exercise for the hody^ as 
well as relaxation for the mind ; but I have seen it carried on 
in a room set apart for that purpose, and so closely packed and 
badly ventilated that it was difficult to remain in it. It hardly 
needs to be said that that which sets the lungs in vigorous 
action implies and demands an abundant supply of fresh air ; 
and that to perform exercise in close rooms is more exhausting 
than to sit still. The personal influence of a vigorous and full- 
blooded master may be very beneficial in correcting the errors 
of subordinate teachers in these respects. 

Apparatus. — "Every heating-apparatus or system of heat- 
ing which does not provide in itself for an ample and regular 
change of air, or which is not connected with suitable arrange- 
ments for such a change, is injurious to health." These words 
are axiomatic. They condemn a great variety of appliances, 
some of them the most popular. Most systems of heating in 
which coils of pipe stand in the rooms or entries are included 
in this condemnation. Every such coil should have its special 
duct, flue, or hole in the house-wall, for the introduction of a 
due amount of fresh air. The air thus introduced should enter 
a box enclosing the coil of pipe, and after circulating about 



62 

the coil is to be discharged by a register into the room : this 
arrangement is equally correct, whether the coil be placed in 
the chambers, or whether (as is often done in schools) the 
boxes, containing the coils, are placed in the cellar like the 
hot-air box of common furnaces. 

This provides for the introduction of a considerable amount 
of warm air : it is now necessary to think of the extraction of 
vitiated air. 

A school-room cannot be ventilated in winter — and scarcely 
in summer — without special flues for the purpose. An ordinary 
air-tight stove carries up the chimney enough air to ventilate 
for one person ; an open fireplace, enough for a dozen, or less. 
With the aid of partly opened windows, the fire on the hearth 
will answer perfectly ; but it is very wasteful, and has the disad- 
vantage of being at one side or end of the room, so that some 
parts may be cold while others are too warm. It is apt, also, 
to leave the floors cold. If, however, a chimney is connected 
with a room, the fireplace should not be stopped up, unless it 
should happen to give ingress to disagreeable currents of cold 
air. A little fire on the hearth, or a gas-jet burning high in 
the chimney, or even a lamp placed in the fireplace, will keep 
up the draught ; and the chimney, if not used for the escape of 
smoke, may carry off foul air. 

In most large schools, as now built, flues are connected with 
each room. Until lately such flues were almost invariably too 
small. For a class of fifty pupils, requiring 1,700 cubic feet 
per minute, the united transverse sections of the flues should 
equal five square feet, or more. There should be apertures or 
gratings, both at the top and bottom of the wall. The air at 
the top is usually quite as had as that at bottom^ and is apt to be 
warmer too : ventilation from the top, therefore, is desirable in 
summer, though in winter it may be thought too wasteful of 
heat to rely entirely upon it. 

Nature has been very kind to man in one respect. The poi- 
soned air from the gas-jets is taken to the top of the room, by 
its ascensional force, away from our persons. If a man were 
compelled to spend an evening with his head close to the ceil- 
ing, he would be ready to make his will at the close of it. It 
would be a natural method of ventilating, to make a sufficient 



53 

opening at top, and let the air rush out ; but this method would 
waste heat, and would leave the lower strata of air cold. 
Leaving out of consideration the gas-jets, as seldon:i used in 
day-schools, we may consider that the breath of the pupils is 
difiPased through the whole mass of air in a room, a little more 
at the top than elsewhere. This slight excess at top being dis- 
regarded, we may endeavor to cause the entire mass of air to 
move downward, and to pass out through ventilators at the 
level of the floor. Water should be evaporated in the hot air- 
box. 

Every system of flues for drawing air from rooms should be 
provided with means for heating them. The application of 
heat to the flues is made in. various ways. Sometimes a special 
furnace or stove is put into the flue; sometimes the smoke- 
pipes from the heaters or furnaces are led through or by it; 
sometimes coils of steam or water pipes are introduced, or gas- 
jets. A draught, in many cases considerable in amount, is 
obtainable in the lower stories, even without heating the flues ; 
it is a familiar fact that a tall chimney will often draw when 
not heated. But this source of power for ventilating purposes 
cannot be relied on. Neither is the action of the wind upon 
ventilating mitres, placed on chimneys, at all a constant one. 
The simplest method of ventilation, approaching to thorough- 
ness, is that by heated flues. It is expensive, unless the heat 
from the smoke-flue be utilized ; but it can be easily under- 
stood and managed, and is fairly satisfactory in its results. 

The best system yet adopted in schools requires a good deal 
of watching, and cannot be intrusted to the sole care of a jani- 
tor. It is for his interest to appear economical of his coal : he 
is therefore under a constant temptation to check the outflow 
of warm air from the rooms, and to limit as much as possible 
the period of airing-out, ivhich should come daily after school. 
Good ventilation is an end which cannot be gained without the 
expenditure of much fuel ; for the foul air, thrown away, is 
warm air, and the heat it contains is necessarily lost. 

Great economy of fuel could be attained by introducing 

double windows. A single thickness of glass cools the air 

enormously ; and, if one is sitting under it, a draught of falling 

cold air is felt which is both real and dangerous. This draught 

4 



54 

is not due to tbe entrance of cold fresh air, but is produced hy 
the chilling of a layer of warm air in contact with the glass, 
which naturally falls to the level of the floor. Another use of 
double windows is that of direct ventilation. Let the lower 
sash outside be sligbtly raised, and the upper sash inside slightly 
lowered ; air will then pass between the two sashes, and will 
enter the room near the ceiling, having in its passage over six 
feet of glass (inner window) received a good deal of heat from 
the room, and being therefore partially warmed before entering. 

One of the simplest remedies for bad air is to fit a board, of 
the breadth of three or four inches only, under the lower sash 
(of a single window) ; this shuts out no appreciable amount of 
light, and raises the sash so that, between its upper part and. the 
lower part of the upper sash, a current of air is admitted in an 
ascending direction. This plan is extremely cheap, and may 
be used anywhere ; it is quite effective in cold weather. 

Another plan consists in placing a narrow board at the top 
of the upper sash, tilting a little inwards so as to let the air pass 
over it and strike the ceiling. 

A small furnace with a brisk fire, doing duty for a large 
house, heats a small amount of air very hot, and in doing this 
produces a change of some sort which is felt as disagreeable. 
A peculiar burnt smell, a deadness in the air, announces that 
something is wrong. The smell may be merely due to the 
burning of particles of dust in the air, but it produces discom- 
fort, and cannot be regarded as a wholesome condition. This 
fault may be avoided by using a large furnace which burns 
slowly. 

Too much care cannot be taken of the inlets for fresh air. 
They usually consist of wooden or galvanized-iron tubes, run- 
ning across the cellar to the hot-air box. If of wood, they are 
sure to have cracks, which let in more or less of the cellar air. 
Many are expressly provided with valves for drawing a supply 
of air from the cellar ; a proceeding which is entirely indefensi- 
ble. For the cellar is presumably weather-tight ; and where is 
the air to come from that enters the inlets, in case they are 
closed against the outer air? The air comes directly from the 
cellar, and may possibly be free from local contamination ; but 
it comes eventually from the rooms and halls above the cellar, 



65 

— from rooms already full of vitiated air, — and the result is the 
establishment of a vicious circle ; bad air descends into the cel- 
lar, is warmed, re-ascends, and re-descends. 

It may be permitted to draw air from an empty cellar cham- 
ber which is cut off from the rest of the house and cellar, and 
which cannot possibly be contaminated by dust, ashes, the gas 
from the furnace-door, or other sources ; a chamber, in short, 
which is perfectly sweet and neat, and supplied with air 
directly from out of doors. But it is a shorter way, to exclude 
cellar air altogether. The real motive for using it is usually 
that of economy of fuel, — an economy which implies the use of 
poor air. 

The inlet for air should be protected by being placed out of 
boys' reach; and in any case it should be a few feet from the 
ground, above the level of the street or ground effluvia if pos- 
sible. Its orifice should be grated or screened. Dust may be 
sifted out through a canvas bag or tube ; but, as this will rarely 
be applied, I would recommend the choice of a place not 
exposed to dust. 

If a stove is set up in a shool-room, it ought to have a flue 
leading out of doors, through which pure air should enter, and 
come in contact with the heated iron or stone. The stove 
should be boxed or sheathed around with iron or tin, forming 
an air space, into the lower part of which the above flue should 
open : a powerful current of fresh warmed air would thus be 
drawn into the room. The stove-doors should of course be 
excluded from this box ; and the draught for supplying the 
fire should come from the general atmosphere of the room, thus 
extracting a certain amount of bad air. Further ventilation 
could be obtained by sheathing the stove-funnel, and making 
the space between sheath and funnel open upwards above the 
roof, and doionwards into the room: by judicious arrangement 
of these expedients, a considerable change of air is effected. 
They constituted a portion of the ventilating apparatus of the 
school-house exhibited in Philadelphia in 1876, by the Belgian 
government. 

The ventilation of evening-schools is made difficult by the 
presence of smoke, greasy vapor, sulphurous acid, and other 
products of the combustion of oil or gas. A well-managed 



56 

kerosene-lanjp is not often seen in public buildings, but would 
be both the cheapest and the least injurious. Burning gas pro- 
duces a suffocating air, due to the presence of impurities which 
cannot be wholly got rid of. Tallow candles are not advisable. 
When lighted artificially, a room should have the upper venti- 
lators open and in vigorous action. 

The air of a school ought not only to be free from excess of 
carbonic acid when analyzed : it should smell fresh and sweet. 
Many schools, even of the best class, are characterized by a 
peculiar foul smell, like that which clings to the bars of gym- 
nastic apparatus, and betraying the fact that the floors and 
other woodwork are saturated with the more or less volatile 
products of animal decomposition arising from the perspiration, 
breath, saliva, and the countless scents brought in the children's 
clothes from the domestic fireside. To avoid this evil as far as 
possible, it is recommended to select wood that is not porous. 
For the floors, hard pine, saturated in hot linseed oil before 
laying, will give a surface nearly impenetrable to moisture or 
vapors, which dries instantly when washed, and is very durable. 
School-house floors ought to be washed with soap and hot 
water once a week, and the wainscoting, walls, and furniture 
occasionally. The cellars require scrupulous care. 

Dust should be avoided as far as possible, by providing door- 
mats and scrapers. The children's outer clothes and umbrellas 
should be put in special rooms or wardrobes, which are lighted, 
warmed, and furnished with sufficient ventilation to carry off 
the steam and odor. Clean faces, hands, and shoes should be 
required, and clean feet when shoes are not worn. 

In general, no system of heating and ventilation has been 
devised which will work automatically, without supervision on 
the part of the teacher or engineer. In other words, it takes 
brains, as well as coal and iron, to ventilate a house. The 
required article is not generally to be had for the sum paid. 
Head masters, with a certain amount of instruction in the 
details of management, are better persons to have the responsi- 
bility than janitors. 



67 

SEWERAGE, WATER-CLOSETS, ETC. 

In many schools the condition of the sewerage is such as to 
endanger health. The writer's correspondence with numerous 
physicians last year elicited strong expressions of opinion, 
which ascribe to neglected drains and privies the origin of 
debility and indigestion, of a state of lessened activity, of low 
continued or typhoid fevers, and perhaps of diphtheria ; also 
of catarrhal disease of the respiratory and digestive organs, and 
of dysentery. 

It is often hard to estimate the amount of simple ordinary 
debility due to a slowly acting cause, constantly present. That 
such debility may be produced by ordinary stinks, by living 
in an air containing fascal odors simply, is certain ; and from 
this debility up to the production of headaches with slight 
fever, or of violent, even rapidly fatal cases of typhoid, there 
are all possible gradations. Yet the danger often lies far more 
in that which is not offensive, — in the air which contains 
sewer-gas, hardly noticed by many ; in the sparkling water 
which pleasantly disguises the dose of liquid ordure taken at 
recess-time. The connection of scarlatina, diphtheria, dysen- 
tery, and diarrhoea, with foul odors and bad drains, is now 
admitted to be a fact, though not always a traceable one. 

A water-closet is a contrivance for disposing of faecal matter 
by " water-carriage," in distinction from the privy or dry- 
removal system. It usually is found in our schools to be 
(1) a pan-closet, with a handle, which when raised empties the 
pan, and lets in fresh water ; or (2) a hopper-closet, without 
the pan, and often provided with automatic apparatus for dis- 
charging water into the hopper; or (3) a simple trough of 
masonry and cement, filled with water, which is frequently 
renewed. These are the chief varieties. The latter kind has 
lately been introduced into many large schools, and in some 
cases it is certainly free from objections. It must, however, be 
placed in the cellar or basement, in order to prevent freezing; 
and it is evident that in such a situation it may become a 
dangerous nuisance. To insure protection, it must be built of 
masonry cemented, and must slope gently towards the outlet : 
there should be about it as little woodwork as possible to 
absorb urine ; and the water should be abundant, and changed 



58 

every day with a good flushing afterwards. The sides should 
be cleansed at the same time with a jet of water. The space 
under the seats should be ventilated by a large pipe or pipes 
led to a flue which does not communicate with the rooms, and 
which opens above the roof, far from windows : the flue ought 
to be provided with some means of securing a draught, either 
by heat or otherwise. It would be proper to lead such pipes 
to the common chimney, if we could be sure of a fire there all 
the school-year ; but such chimneys often communicate with 
rooms by fire-places or ventilators, and, during the months 
when fires are not kept up, it is unsafe to have such an open 
connection between the vault and the school-rooms. 

The cellar, also, should be watched, and a constant change 
of air obtained by opening windows according to the weather. 
There are two reasons why bad air in cellars is specially 
dangerous to the inmates of schools : (1) because the furnaces 
are often supplied in part with air from the cellar, which is 
breathed the next minute in the school-room, the air-tube 
often having a slide expressly intended to admit cellar air, and 
even when this bad custom is not observed, the joints of the 
wooden tube being very apt to be loose ; (2) because, inde- 
pendently of this, air has a strong tendency to rise from the 
bottom to the top of a house, passing rapidly even through 
floors and ceilings, so that cellar influences are nearly sure to 
be felt in the rooms. 

As regards the other forms (pan and hopper-closets), there 
are certain faults to be spoken of. A pan-closet presents many 
surfaces on which the discharges can collect: the stream of 
water is often too weak even to clear out the visible accumula- 
tions, and in some cases altogether fails to reach those at the 
back of the pan, etc. ; so that, if not washed, it is apt to be 
offensive. The chief objection to the pan- closet, however, 
arises from the small chamber of foul air between the pan and 
the trap below it. A hopper-closet need not be open to this 
objection, provided the jet is abundant and well directed. One 
or two of these may be placed, if desired, in each story and in 
the cellar; but each ought to have its window opening to the 
outer air. 

For perfect ventilation of such places, nothing is better than 



59 

a tube, leading to the chimney or open air, or one in the lower 
part of which (at a height of, say three feet from the floor) a 
gas-jet is kept burning, giving rise to a current upwards: the 
gas may be made useful for light by inserting a pane of glass 
in the side of the tube. It may be well to add, that wooden 
tubes, traversing several stories, assist the spread of fire in a 
building. 

Many schools, including some in country towns, report the 
presence of small water-closets in the first or second stories. 
If care be taken that these are well aired and cleansed, they 
are not objectionable, but positively desirable, in these situa- 
tions. There is no doubt that girls especially require some 
such accommodation, as in a large class there will always be 
some who ought not to be exposed to the weather, nor to be 
forced to go up and down stairs unnecessarily. 

In some schools, water-closets, apparently of the pan variety, 
are placed in the cellar, in number sufficient for the wants of 
the whole school. These will require at least as much watch- 
ing as the water-vault closets above described. In planning a 
cellar, all such conveniences should be placed, in an apartment 
strictly separate from that containing the furnace or the play- 
room, and should have access by windows to the outer air. 

The necessity of interposing some obstacle to the rise of gas 
from sewers, through soil-pipes, into houses, has become gen- 
erally known to the public. An S-shaped bend in the pipe, if 
placed ia a proper situation, and if the soil-pipe is properly 
ventilated, will answer the purpose : there are various other 
contrivances, all equivalent to simple reservoirs of water, placed, 
so as to intercept upward currents of gas. But, whatever be 
the arrangements for trapping individual basins or closets in 
upper stories, it is essential that the main soil-pipe should be 
trapped, before it leaves the building, at a low point, i. e., in 
the cellar. All soil-pipes should be easily accessible, should 
be in plain view or protected by simple removable wooden 
boxing, through their entire course. If enclosed behind lath 
and plaster, or sealed up under a cement floor, their defects 
cannot be discovered without great trouble and expense. The 
best plumbing in the best built houses is extremely liable to 
injury from slight settling of foundations, from corrosion, frost, 



60 

or rats; and injury to health may result before any strong 
odor is detected. 

An earth-closet consists of a portable box, with a lid like 
that of a common water-closet, and worked by a handle in a 
similar way, only that the pulling of the handle throws a 
quantity of powdered and dried earth over the deposited 
matter, instead of sending a jet of water. The earth absorbs 
the odor in a nearly perfect nmnner, if it be well dried and 
powdered; sand will not answer the purpose; charcoal in 
powder is the best of all. No disinfectant is needed. The 
apparatus can be safely used in the house, when water-closets 
are not practicable : it is reported as giving satisfaction by two 
of the correspondents, but always requires a great deal of care 
in its management, in order to prevent the occurrence of bad 
odors. 

A privy is a non-portable arrangement, in which the f^ces 
are not deposited in water, but in a vault or other excavation, 
or on the natural surface of the ground. The privy can never 
be approved as wholesome : it is capable of injuring the health 
in many ways. In the commonest form in which it occurs in 
our country schools, the filth is either thrown upon the surface 
of the ground, in which case the person is dangerously exposed 
to cold air; or it is thrown into a pit, where it accumulates 
usually for a year at a time. A cheap, convenient, and whole- 
some substitute for this familiar nuisance is to be found in the 
" pail- closet," in which a pail made of half of a kerosene oil 
barrel is placed under each seat, and the contents removed 
every week for a fertilizer. At the bottom of the pails a layer 
of ashes, or of dry earth pulverized, is first laid ; and a sufficient 
amount, say a pint or more, of the same should be thrown in 
after each time of use, taking some little pains to cover up all 
deposits. Of the present usual form of privy, it may be said 
that the simplest and cheapest one much in use in the small 
country towns, involves the minimum of annoyance and risk, 
since whatever faecal accumulation occurs is all on the surface, 
and is in such free communication with the outer air as to be 
rapidly dried and disinfected. But at the best it pollutes the 
soil beneath more than is suspected. It is not cleared out one- 
tenth as often as is needed, and it exposes those who use it to 
the inclemencies of the weather to a dano-erous extent. 



61 

Privies upon the pail-sj'stem, properly cared for, need no 
other disinfectant than that here mentioned, viz., dry earth or 
fine ashes, except perhaps in the hot weather of midsummer. 
Privies of the old-fashioned country sort cannot be properly 
disinfected, for the greater part of all their contents will soak 
in and contaminate the soil to an indefinite extent. No well 
in their vicinity is safe. 

The impression seems almost universal, that the earth 
destroys all poisonous matter as soon as it soaks in ; an 
impression which is practically and most dangerously false. 
The greater number state that they are emptied once a year; 
and this seems to be thought often enough. One-fourth of the 
whole number, however, state that the arrangements are "the 
source of offensive odors ;" and no one can doubt that this is 
an understatement of the fact. 

A privy under the same roof that shelters the school ought 
not to exist for a moment. It is true that delicate children 
ought to be'spared exposure ; it is true that the fear of exposure 
in winter, or a natural shrinking from the foulness of ill-kept 
privies, leads many little children to conceal their natural wants 
to their bodily harm. But provision for such cases can be 
made in small country schools by the earth-closet; in large 
schools there should be a few water-closets, and the main out- 
house, when there is one, should communicate with the school 
by a dry covered way. Most children will require to visit the 
place once in the school-day, and it is not right to turn them 
out of doors in all weathers for the purpose. This point is 
almost universally neglected. 

Boys and girls should not have to use the same privy. There 
ought to be two buildings, and not one divided by boards into 
two parts: a board fence should separate the two sexes in 
going and coming ; and, where present arrangements are bad, 
the boys should have their recess at a different time from the 
girls. To insure decency, and to check immorality, a trust- 
worthy monitor might be appointed not only for recess, but to 
accompany every child who goes out during school-hours. 

A large receptacle may serve as an excuse to neglect frequent 
cleanings ; and the absence of an outlet, and of a water-supply 
to flush the vault, would make any such structure objectionable. 



62 

Storage of faeces in a concentrated form must be an evil : other- 
wise cement and brick are certainly desirable elements in the 
structure. 

Urinals ought to be provided for boys' schools, and washed 
daily with soap and water. The proper materials for the 
exposed portions are either slate, glazed ironware, or glass. 
Metal surfaces corrode, and retain the decomposed urine ; paint 
is not a sufficient protection, 

Disivfeciants. — The best and cheapest are, fresh air and sun- 
light ; water, both for dilution and for washing ; earth, for 
covering solid discharges from the body; dry heat (200-240° 
F.), for clothing that has been exposed to the effluvia of disease. 

To these add the following chemical disinfectants : Sulphur- 
fumes, produced by burning in a tightly closed room or house, 
in infection ; a solution of sulphate of iron (three pounds) and 
carbolic acid undiluted (one pint), in water (a pailful), for foul 
vaults; solution of chlorinated soda, or of nitrate of lead (one 
part to eight parts of water), or of permanganate of potassium 
(one per cent.). 



CHARLES MORGAN. 

The recent death of the most liberal benefactor of the Public 
Schools in Connecticut, justly claims a notice in this Report. 
Mr. Charles Morgan died at his home in New York, May 8th, 
1878, at the age of eighty-three years. Born in Clinton, Conn., 
in 1795, family necessities compelled him to support himself 
when only fourteen years old. Commencing life thus early, 
for himself, as a clerk in a small grocery shop in New York, 
he finished it as a millionaire at eighty-three. He never ceased 
to regret that his only school training was that afforded under 
fourteen years of age, in the common district school. By his 
fidelity and economy, he had gained enough to start a ship 
chandlery store, before he was of age. Ultimately the sole 
owner of the Morgan line of steamers between New York and 
New Orleans, and of the extensive line of steamers engaged in 
the Texas trade, and of the New Orleans and Great Western 
Railroad, he regularly gave employment to over 5,000 men. 



63 

The study of such a life brings home a useful lesson to the 
youth of Connecticut. 

Unswerving integrity and fidelity in minute details marked 
his beginning as a clerk, and his career when he became the 
sole owner of the largest fleet of steamers and the longest line 
of railway belonging to one man in America. His personal 
industry, economy, sagacity and honesty were the secret of his 
great success. He had no faith in luck. Fortune meant 
nothing in business affairs to him. He had the nerve to meet 
disasters without repining. One of his greatest discourage- 
ments was the loss of steamers along the treacherous and shift- 
ing coast of Texas. In rapid succession nine of his iron steam- 
ers were wrecked, and all without insurance. He at once built 
other and better ships, and in advance of the United States 
Coast Survej^, he kept the coast so frequently surveyed that for 
twenty years prior to 1873 he did not lose a vessel. His mar- 
velous energy and capacity for details^ united with comprehen- 
siveness of mind, are seen in the fact that his great business 
was created and controlled from first to last by himself. 

He treated his operatives with that courtesy and liberality 
which bound him in strongest ties to them. Many names hon- 
ored abroad are tarnished at home among dependents and em- 
ployes. Only che strictest honesty and fair dealing can stand the 
test of business intercourse with thousands of hands for over 
forty 3'ears. Mr. Morgan fairly earned and fully gained their con- 
fidence and respect, and thus practically solved the labor prob- 
lem. A few hours before his funeral a telegram was received 
by the family in New York from his employes in New Orleans, 
in which they speak in strong terms of "the zeal, public spirit, 
and above all, unquestioned integrity of the one who had been 
to us not merely an employer, but always a true, kind-hearted 
and generous friend." This telegram plainly tells how labor 
and capital were harmonized, and why in place of strife or 
alienation, sympathy and good feeling prevailed between Mr. 
Morgan and his hands. 

My acquaintance with Mr. Morgan began in the autumn of 
1869, when he was considering the question of endowing a 
school in his native town. Cordially welcoming this sugges- 
tion from the outset, I assured him that I should deem it an 



64 

honor to be his adviser in maturing plans so liberal and far- 
reaching in their results, and a privilege to contribute in any 
way in ray power to the success and prosperity of the 
Institution he should found. In this way, there grew up a 
familiar acquaintance and a strong friendship, which led me to 
appreciate highly his sterling traits of character; his frankness 
and sincerity ; his honor and integrity ; his quick perceptions, 
business sagacity, and untiring energy ; his warm devotion to 
his friends, and deep and grateful interest in his native town 
and in the old homestead in Clinton, which he ever kept up, in 
memory of his early days. His mg-nly traits were softened 
by a genuine modesty. Though somewhat brusque in man- 
ner, he showed at heart the delicacy and unobtrusiveness 
of a child. 

Simple in his taste and strongly averse to ostentation, pre- 
tense and assumption, he made no display of wealth, either 
in dress or surroundings. With a natural fondness for chil- 
dren, he easily came into sympathy with them, and won their 
confidence and love. The sight of the happy faces in the 
Morgan School, their merry songs, their literary exercises, and 
grateful tributes to him, touched his heart most tenderly, and 
made his repeated visits to this Institution occasions of rare 
satisfaction and delight to him. He once said to me, " Though 
I have handled a good deal of money, no equal amount ever 
gave me such genuine gratification as that bestowed on the 
Morgan School ;'' to which I replied, " As President Pierson, 
when instructing the first classes of Yale College, near the site 
of the Morgan School, builded far better than, he knew, so the 
future history and usefulness of this school — already prosper- 
ous beyond your expectations — generations yet unborn alone 
can tell." 

No town of its size in Connecticut, or, so far as I know, in 
the country, can show a school edifice so admirable, and well 
provided with school appliances. Many youth of Clinton, 
against whom penury would otherwise bar the temple of 
knowledge, will here gain a higher education. This school 
will awaken new ambitions and discover and develop what 
otherwise would be latent talent. Many a gifted, but poor and 
modest boy, will here be made conscious of his power, and 



65 

be inspired with aspirations for the broadest culture. The Mor- 
gan School has already accomplished larger and grander results 
than did Yale College during the life-time of its first President. 

The last letter I received from Mr. Morgan contained a 
request that I would join him in a visit to the Morgan School 
as soon as the restoration of his health would enable him to 
bear the journey. The hope, which I had not given up, of 
again sharing this pleasure with him, was suddenly cut off by 
the sad summons to follow his remains to their final resting 
place. During his last sickness he thought and spoke and did 
much for the Morgan School. His last gift to it of one hun- 
dred thousand dollars was made but a few weeks before his 
death. The total of his expenditures for the School, including 
the statues at Clinton and Yale, the building, endowments, and 
gifts for prizes, was nearly three hundred thousand dollars. 

His interest in it increased to the last. Every anniversary of 
the school and each succeeding year witnessed some new gift 
to it, or some liberal present to the scholars. Had he lived 
still longer, this interest would have deepened and his benefac- 
tions would have continued. Among his plans of enlarge- 
ment, as the growth of the school might require, was the erec- 
tion of a large Boarding-house for students, the purchase of 
additional grounds fronting the school, and the laying out of a 
fine street from the school house directly to the shore. 

Mr. Morgan's example in the princely gift he made to his 
native town is worthy of imitation. Are there not other sons 
of Connecticut whose love for the homestead will prompt sim- 
ilar donations to their native towns? By founding schools 
and libraries, how easily could the favorites of fortune build a 
monument each for himself, and be henceforth gratefully recog- 
nized as the benefactor of his fellow-citizens and of future gen- 
erations. There is a rare luxury in witnessing the fruits of 
one's benefactions, giving while living, and able to enjoy the 
rich results, rather than leaving legacies to be lessened or lost 
in the wrangles of contending heirs. 



THE NORMAL SCHOOL. 

All candidates for teaching are invited lo seriously consider 
the question whether they can afford to deny themselves the 
rich opportunities now offered in our JSTormal School. Experi- 
ence shows that special preparation is requisite for the highest 
success in teaching. No calling more needs a special school for 
instruction in its appropriate science and methods. Visiting 
schools in all parts of the State, I can bear testimony to the 
superior success of Normal graduates.. I frequently hear from 
them strong statements as to the advantages gained by them 
from their Normal Course. 

Though the attendance at the Normal School has gradually 
increased, it falls far short of what it might be and ought to be. 
If there was throughout the State a just appreciation of the 
school, it would be thronged, and at least a^ hundred candidates 
would be found seeking admission at the opening of the term 
in September next.- School visitors cannot well render a better 
service to the cause of education than by calling the attention 
of young teachers to the value of professional training. My 
opinions on this subject may seem to be biased by my official 
connection with the school. I will therefore cite an impartial 
witness, one who has had large experience as a teacher and in 
the organization and supervision of State schools — Dr. Barnas 
Sears, As Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, 
President of Brown University, and for many years Agent of 
the. Peabody Education Fund, he has had rare opportunities of 
observing methods and results on a broad field. His successful 
experience in aiding and establishing public schools in all the 
Southern States has fully confirmed the opinions he formed 
while supervising the schools of Massachusetts. His wise and 



67 

earnest words are strongly commended to the careful considera- 
tion of our school visitors and through them to all young candi- 
dates for teaching. 

"The great fault with untrained teachers is, that thev do 
little but teach the words and formulas of books. A Normal 
graduate teaches things, principles, thoughts. Every point is 
examined orally ; and subjects are sifted by the exercise of the 
judgment as well as the memory. The pupil is made to see 
with his own eyes, and to rely on his own observations. Books 
are a mere syllabus, a skeleton, to be clothed with flesh by the 
teacher and pupil. Practical knowledge of almost every kind 
is worked in continually with the subjects of study. All the 
common objects of sight — such as flowers, plants, trees, rocks, 
birds, insects, tame and wild animals, form, color, and dimen- 
sions ; manners, morals, laws of health ; gymnastic exercises, 
drawing, and the cultivation of the voice, — receive special atten- 
tion. This common-sense knowledge of useful things is a vital 
part of popular education. Instead of this, how often are the 
poor children wearied with the endless repetition of mere words, 
the dry and stale lumber of the books I The only way to pre- 
vent such disastrous results and to make the schools the pride 
of the people is for the State to make provision for thoroughly 
training a large body of teachers. To make a suitable provision 
among teachers certain, it is necessary to establish Normal 
Schools — a proper function of the State. This will give dignity 
to the profession, and produce a radical change in the schools. 
Can anything be more desirable than these two objects ? Is 
there any greater reproach resting upon our systems of educa- 
tion than the low character of many of the schools, and the 
utter incompetency of many of the teachers ? 

It is said by those who do not believe in progress, that a 
teacher is born, not made, which, in its true sense, only means 
that he should have a natural aptitude for his calling, just as if 
this principle were not applicable to a lawyer, physician, or 
even to an artizan of any kind. In addition to this aptitude, 
which only indicates what one's occupation should be, without 
fitting him for it, every man should be bred to his profession. 
To be a great scholar, even a genius must be a diligent student. 
To be a great general, one must be not only born to command, 



68 

but educated to command. There is nothing peculiar in the 
case of the school teacher. His profession is like other profes- 
sions, and requires special preparation, as all others do, and for 
preciseh^ the same reason. The knowledge furnished by our 
literary institutions is only half of what the teacher needs, and 
much the easier half You will find twenty who have this 
qualification, where you find one who knows how to teach and 
govern. The teacher must know how to enter the hidden 
recesses of the youthful mind, and from that point work out- 
ward and upward. The pupil is like a treasure in the sea, and 
the teacher like a diver who goes to the bottom to bring it up. 
If you do not descend and ascertain first exactly where the 
child's mind is, j'-ou will not bring him up where you are. The 
descent of the teacher is essential to the ascent of the pupil. 

The beginnings of knowledge are obscure and. mysterious. 
This is especially true of written language, the first thing with 
which the primary teacher has to deal. The sound of long o, 
for example, has seven different representations ; and each of 
these has a different sound in other words. How does the ordi- 
nary teacher go to work? He makes the child commit to memory 
the names, not the powers, of these letters. What would you think 
of the teacher of chemistry, who, instead of showing what oxygen, 
hydrogen, and nitrogen are, should merely give out the names 
to be committed to memory? There is but one thing more 
absurd; and that is what an educated man once did, who could 
teach Latin, Greek and Mathematics. He called up a child, and, 
pointing to the alphabet, said, 'Go to your seat and get that 
lesson.' He who can begin with a child and skillfully carry him 
through the first fifteen years of his life, does the greatest 
thing that is ever done for him. 

It is said by those who know no better, that a Normal School 
is nothing after all but a State High-School. They might just 
as well say that the science of medicine is nothing but physiol- 
ogy, civil engineering nothing but mathematics, and mining 
nothing but mineralogy, — all of which are taught in our col- 
leges. All professions are based upon general science and 
literature, but are built up on a structure of their own. There 
is a science of teaching and an art of teaching. A complete 
theoretical and practical course, illustrated in all the branches 



69 

to be taught, with their environments, is found nowhere out of 
the Normal School. To make this evident, one needs only to 
learn what a Normal School actually is. 

Besides reviewing elementary studies to see that there are no 
chasms, no weak points, and pursuing advanced studies to shed 
their light on the former, both courses are peculiar in this, that 
every step is taken with reference to the art of teaching. Then 
there is the difficult but indispensable study of the juvenile 
mind; — its intuitions and instincts; its dominant faculties, 
and the order of their development ; its delicate organism, 
weakness, and perils ; its active but one-sided curiosity ; its 
tastes and aversions; the causes of its lethargy or apparent 
dullness; the kind and degree of stimulus it needs; its social 
or unsocial tendencies; the play of its various passions; its 
biases to good or evil ; its condition, as affected by domestic 
example and training; the key which will unlock the secrets of 
its character ; the passion through which it can be governed ; 
its impulsiveness and changeableness ; its love of living con- 
crete forms, and distaste for abstractions ; its irrepressible imag- 
ination ; its active but feeble intellect. 

All these are psychological facts relating to the minds to be 
taught. Next comes the art of teaching, its conditions and pro- 
cesses: — In general, how to unfold a subject from its elementary 
principles ; how to awaken interest and excite curiosity ; how to 
create a sense of propriety and form a pure taste ; how to trans- 
mute the lower into higher motives; how to direct all knowl- 
edge to practical utility; how to make order do the work of 
discipline: — In particular, one must know the adaptation of 
instruction to capacity and attainment; the way to find a firm 
footing to begin with; a sure method of advancing from the 
known to the unknown ; the right proportion of teaching to 
study and thought; the relative claims of each branch of study ; 
the management of the bright and the dull ; the proper indul- 
gence or repression of individuality; the kind and amount of 
actual knowledge to be given. There is a still broader and 
higher view of education to which the teacher must aspire. 
On this subject, a new and progressive science is springing up. 
On what fundamental principles it should be founded and con- 
ducted is a question which is now tasking the strongest intel- 
5 



70 

lects of the Old World. The ablest philosophical writers of 
Germany and England have taken up the subject. 

Since the education of the entire mass of the people has been 
undertaken by all civilized nations, a vastly wider range is 
given to the subject than was known to the old writers. The 
true aim of education is to be more carefully fixed, — -the kind 
and degree of it appropriate to the public schools ; and the 
better preparation for the duties of life are to be more nicely 
adjusted. Keform — not mere innovation made on untried 
theories, or one-sided, empirical methods, or any dead mechan- 
ism,- — but sound, rational reform, founded on well-tested princi- 
ples, is to control the whole process. Shall all this pass over 
our heads ? Or shall the great thoughts of the foremost men 
of the age be put iwto a practical form, and applied in all the 
schools of the land ? They must be made known by means of 
Normal Schools to the great body of teachers." 



THE FIELD PAEKS. 

On the thirty-first day of last October, the four surviving 
sons of Eev. David Dudley Field, D.D., celebrated the seventy- 
fifth anniversary of their father's marriage, by presenting to the 
town of Haddam two tracts of land for public parks, one 
known as Meeting House Grreen, the other including Isinglass 
Rock, west of the Brainard Academy, and comprising ten 
acres. The grounds of the Brainard Academy are thus virtually 
enlarged and made exceedingly attractive. The whole park, 
finely laid out with drives and walks by F. L. Olmsted of New 
York, the landscape gardener, and adorned with the choicest 
ornamental trees indigenous and imported, is a grand contribu- 
tion to the taste, sociality, good fellowship,* education, growth 
and prosperity of the town. The high bluff, "Isinglass Hill," 
commands for many miles a magnificent view of the river and 
its valley, with the long range of hills beyond. This valuable 
addition to the grounds of the Brainard Academy suggests and 
invites a corresponding enlargement of its funds. Brainard 
Academy, useful as it was in Dr. Field's day, is now crippled 
for want of an endowment. 

Dr. Field was long the most prominent and pronounced friend 
of popular education in this town and county. He took great 
interest in the common schools and especially in the Brainard 
Academy. Says A. B. Cook of Chicago, " I well recollect how we 
boys in Haddam liked to have Dr. Field visit our school, with 
his genial, kind face and benevolent smile of recognition j'^r us all, 
and how he cheered us in the Academy when we began the 
higher branches." Hon. D. N. Camp speaks in strong terms of 
the pleasure and profit with which, more than thirty-five years 
ago, he "listened to his timely lectures on public schools, ably 
setting forth broad and earnest convictions of the importance 
of educational progress." The history of the Brainard Acad- 
emy and its early association with Dr. Field, its beautiful and 
healthful location, its surroundings in an orderly, intelligent and 

* It is ah-eady decided to hold in this park an annual festival to cultivate public 
spirit and stimulate an interest in fuither village improvements. 



72 

moral community, and this grand park in the rear, practically a 
part of its own grounds, render this a most eligible site for a 
first class institution of learning, A large group of towns sur- 
rounding Haddam are unfavorably situated for the maintenance 
of separate High Schools, from which a well endowed Academy 
in this central position, easily accessible, both by railroad and 
river, would draw a liberal patronage. There is a hope, not to 
say expectation, that some generous benefactions will place this 
institution on such a basis of wide and permanent usefulness as 
shall realize the desires and anticipations of Dr. Field. What 
worthier monument could be erected to his memory than the 
liberal endowment of this school, for the upbuilding and im- 
provement of which he labored with such well directed zeal. 

The Field Memorial Park is here noticed for the double pur- 
pose of calling attention to the pressing needs of Brainard 
Academy and giving a cordial acknowledgment of the dona- 
tion of the Field brothers. In behalf of the friends of educa- 
tion so far as I may represent them, I desire to express a high 
appreciation of their grand gift to Haddam and thus to Con- 
necticut, for our Slate takes a lively interest in the growth and 
prosperity of each of her towns. This worthy example ought 
to make many others, opportune as it is, in view of the growing 
interest in rural adornment throughout our State. There is 
hardly one of our towns that has not at home or abroad some 
favored sons who, by forming parks or founding schools or 
libraries, could easily render this most fitting tribute to their 
mother soil. 

The sentiment that honors and cherishes one's birth-place 
is noble and ennobling. I am aware that a popular prejudice 
associates weakness and effeminacy with such taste, refinement 
and liberality. But this sentiment has ever characterized the 
greatest and best of men and is a prime element of true man- 
hood. The cold and selfish soul is sterile in heroic virtues. 
There is a New England railway king, now a millionaire, who 
seldom visits his native town, takes no interest in it, does noth- 
ing for it^ and leaves even the old homestead and grounds, 
though still owned by him, neglected and forlorn. Indeed such 
examples are too common. On the other hand, the greatest 
grandeur of intellect accords with fervor of filial feeling, with 



73 

fondest home attachments and with refinement and delicacy of 
taste. It is perfectly in keeping with the intellectual greatness 
of Daniel Webster to find him fondly cherishing and beautify- 
ing the old homestead, enriching and improving the paternal 
acres and eloquently discoursing on the sacred associations of 
home, the transcendent sweets of domestic life, the happiness of 
kindred and parents and children. Washington was as delicate, 
courteous and affectionate in his domestic relations and attach- 
ments as he was wise in council and courageous in war, A 
beautiful trait in Bryant's character was evinced by his devotion 
to the old homestead and the little secluded town of Cumming- 
ton among the Hampshire hills, hallowed to him by the memo- 
ries of father and mother, and the sacred association of child- 
hood. To that little town which he did so much to adorn and 
enrich and educate, he ever deemed it a privilege to make an 
annual visit — a summer visit with his household, often pro- 
longed for weeks and months. That the old early associations 
might remain, raising the old house, he built beneath and 
around it a stately mansion, so that the paternal rooms remained 
intact. 

It is a good omen that public interest in the embellishments 
of rural homes and villages is widely extending, and that the 
varied charms of the country with its superior advantages for 
the physical and moral training of children are attracting many 
thoughtful men to the simpler enjoyments and employments of 
rural life. With this growth of public taste, the day is not 
distant when fine parks, though not as beautiful as "Isinglass 
Hill," and elegant country villas and villages will abound 
throughout our State. 

Dr. Bushnell, with his keen observation and intense love of 
rural scenery was wont to vsay, " No part of our country between 
the two oceans is susceptible of greater external beauty than 
Connecticut. It is not in the great cities nor in the confined 
shops of trade, but principally in agriculture that the best 
stock or staple of men is grown. It is in the open air, in 
communion with the sky, the earth, and all living things, that 
the largest inspiration is drunk in and the vital energies of a 
real man are constructed." A taste for rural adornment is a 
source of physical, mental and moral health as well as enjoy- 



74 

ment. The parentage of parks, lawns, trees, flowers, vines and 
shrubs becomes a matter of just pride and binds one to the 
spot he has adorned. This park will be a school for coming 
generations where young and old alike may study nature in 
her fairest forms and learn new lessons of truth and beauty. 

Nature is the great educator. Birds, flowers, insects, and 
all animals are our practical primary teachers. In Grod's plan, 
facts and objects as best seen in the country are the earliest 
and the leading instruments of developing the faculties of the 
juvenile mind. They cannot be fully trained when cooped up 
within brick walls, witnessing only city scenes. 

The excessive passion for city attractions and ambition for 
easier lives and more genteel employments have brought ruin 
to multitudes and financial disaster to the nation. A great 
peril to the land to-day comes from the swelling throngs, rang- 
ing from the reckless tramp to the fashionable idler, who are 
ever devising expedients alike foul or fair, to get a living with- 
out work. The disparagement of country life has been one of 
the worst tendencies of the times. The country has ever 
been the great school of mind, and has sent forth far more 
than its proportion of gifted men to the centers of influence. 
An illustration is found in the striking fact that the Chief 
Justice of the United States and two of the Associate Judges 
were born within thirty-five miles of Haddam.* 

Every influence should therefore be combined to foster these 
home attachments, for there is protection as well as education 
in the fervent love of home with its sacred associations. Patri- 
otism itself hinges on the domestic sentiments. When one's 
home becomes the Eden of taste and interest and joy, those 
healthful local ties are formed which bind him first and most to 
the spot he has embellished, and then to his town, his Stale 
and country. Whatever adorns one's home and ennobles his 
domestic life, strengthens kis love of country and nurtures all 
the better elements of his nature. On the other hand, any man 
without local attachments can have no genuine patriotism. As 
happy in one place as in another, he is like a tree planted in a 
tub, portable indeed, but at the expense of growth and strength. 
Said Monsieur Lariaux, the French Deputy to the American 

* Chief Justice Waits was born in Lyme, Judge Field in Haddam, and Judge 
Strong in Somers. 



75 

Evangelical Alliance, in his farewell address, " your homes, 
homes, sweet homes — these are the safeguards of your freedom. 
Oh pray, as you gather at your family altars, that my poor 
France may have such homes." 

Dr. Field really was the father of the Brainard Academy. He 
started the project, selected the site, planned the building and 
prompted the Brainard brothers to build and endow the school. 
He was chairman of the Board of Trustees and the chief man- 
ager of the school. He laid the corner stone and gave an able 
address on that occasion, June 8, 1839, which was published 
entire in the Middletown Constitution, a copy of which is furn- 
ished me by the kindness of a citizen of Haddam who heard it. 
A few extracts from this address are here pertinent. " The 
corner stone of Brainard Academy on this beautiful site is now 
laid. The institution owes its existence to the liberality of the 
two brothers N. and Gr. Brainard. May they live to see the 
good effects of their bounty in the growing intelligence, virtue, 
and good order of this community. The Academy is designed 
particularly for intellectual education, but knowledge should 
be inculcated in connection with those principles and motives 
which are most likely with the Divine blessing to lead youth 
to virtue and piety. Our capacity for knowledge suggests the 
importance of education. Endowed with understanding, we 
are criminal if we do not cultivate our intellects. What is so 
plainly a duty is also essential to our happiness. Ignorance 
instead of being " the mother of devotion" is the mother of 
errors, crimes, and abominations innumerable. Penitentiaries 
and prisons confirm this declaration. Ignorance is the mother 
of nothing good. The animal gratifications which may be 
enjoyed without education are the lowest allotted to man, and 
even these education regulates and refines. Knowledge every- 
where is power, but associated with virtue, it is power for doing- 
good, power to get property, without which the great ends of 
civilized society cannot be attained. The arts involved in hus- 
bandry, manufactures and commerce are based upon science. 
Were education more extended and elevated, more inventors 
like Fulton and Whitney would arise to bless mankind. For 
the want of education, how few things have savages to make 
life comfortable. The attachments of husbands and wives, of 



76 

parents and children, and of members of their tribes, are more 
like! the attachments of bears and tigers to their mates, their 
young and company. There is nothing of the taste and refine- 
ment needful to make home wholly sweet home. But some, 
admitting the importance of a common school education, affirm 
that the higher branches are not needed. This is a mistake. 
Both are essential to important purposes in society. Both need 
to be more cultivated and elevated than they have ever yet 
been anywhere in the world. Besides, the common branches 
of education will not be cherished without the higher. The 
common schools of our country were introduced by the best 
educated men of the times. None know the value of education 
so well as those who have enjoyed its benefits the most. These 
are the most efficient and able advocates of education in all its 
branches. All the light possessed and reflected by the inferior 
orbs comes down from the sun. In view of these principles, 
with what emotion should we regard the commencement of an 
institution like this — an institution long needed here, long 
hoped for, and now about to be realized. Such an institution 
duly managed promises unspeakable good. And who are inte- 
rested in this ? Primarily the youth whom I see around me 
and who will soon experience its blessings. Many will attend 
this Academy who could not command the means of going out 
of town for their education. All may here gain a superior 
education and enjoy at the same time the guardianship of parents 
and the kind offices of friends. Parents are interested for they 
live in their children. The patriot, the philanthropist, the 
Christian is interested. Who then is there that loves the young, 
that loves society, that loves the church, that loves the soul, 
who will not pray that our sons may be as plants grown up in 
their youth, that our daughters may be as corner stones polished 
after the similitude of a -palace. Pray we must for except the Lord 
build this house they will labor in vain who build it. Except He 
prosper us, our fond anticipations for this institution will not be 
realized." The dedicatory prayer which Dr. Field then offered 
is remembered to this day by the older citizens of Haddam as 
an earnest and almost an inspired production. 

It is fitting to follow this address of Dr. Field by that of his 
eldest son given at the dedication of the Field Park. 



77 

'' Ladifjs AiSTD 4tENTLEMEN : — You know that we are here to 
deliver into your hands the parcel of ground on which we are 
standing, and that other which lies in view before us, to be kept 
as pleasure grounds for the people of Haddam in all time to 
come. We give them in memory of our father and mother, 
who were married seventy-five years ago to-day, and came 
immediately afterward to make their abode on this river-side, 
where he was soon to become the pastor of the church and con- 
gregation. Here they lived active and useful lives, in the fear 
of God and love of man, doing faithfully their several duties, he 
in public ministrations from pulpit and altar, at bridal, baptism, 
and burial, and she in the quiet tasks of her well-ordered house- 
hold. Though now, after more than fifty years of wedded life, 
they sleep side by side in the pleasant valley beyond the Con- 
necticut hills, where their last days passed serenely away, they 
were faithful until death to the love of their early home. 
Natural indeed it was, for here they passed their first years 
together ; here they raised their first domestic altar, and here 
most of their children were born. For this cause, and in grate- 
ful remembrance of their love and sacrifices for us, we, their 
surviving children, four of us only out of ten, present these 
memorials, not of cold stone, though the hills about us teem 
with everlasting granite, but of shaded walks, green lawns, and 
spreading trees, where this people may find pleasure and refresh- 
ment, generation after generation, so long as these fertile 
meadows, these rugged hills, and this winding river shall 
endure. And remembering that "beauty is truth, truth beauty," 
we hope that they will cultivate here that love of nature, which 
is a joy in youth and a solace in age ; which nourishes the 
affections, and refines while it exalts; which rejoices in the 
seasons and the months as they pass, with their varying beau- 
ties ; catches the gladness of June and the radiance of the 
October woods ; and in every waking moment, sees, hears, or 
feels, something of the world around to take pleasure in and be 
grateful for. We trust that they will come, not in this year 
only or this century, but in future years and centuries, the fair 
young girl, the matron in the glory of womanhood, the boy and 
the man, grandson and grandsire, in whatever condition or cir- 
cumstance, poverty or riches, joy or sorrow, to find here a new 
6 



78 

joj or a respite from sorrow ; to driuk in the light of sun and 
moon, listen to the music of birds aud winds, feel the fresh 
breath of life-sustaining air, thank Grod and take courage. 

Reverently then we dedicate these memorials of our parents, 
to the enjoyment forever hereafter of those, and the descendants 
of those, whom they loved, and among whom they dwelt." 

The following letter of Governor Hubbard will be read with 
interest. 

Executive Department, State of Conn,, ) 
Hartford, October 29, 1878. \ 

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your invita- 
tion to be present at a memorial presentation by the Messrs. 
Field, of a public park to the town of Haddam. Engagements 
which I caimot control will oblige me to be absent. I regret 
this necessity; for, in the first place, I should be glad of an 
opportunity to present my respects to the very distinguished, 
gentlemen to whom you are so much indebted for this endow- 
ment, and whose generosity and filial piety will cause the names 
of both father and sons to be remembered by your townsmen 
from generation to generation. 

In the next place, I should be glad to mark my interest in a 
work of Village Improvement, which will not fail, I trust, to\ 
awaken public attention and provoke imitation throughout our 
whole State ; and I shall not regret it, but hail it rather, if this 
addition to the attractions of your picturesque and historical 
old town, furnished by gentlemen from without the State, one 
of them from the other side of the continent even, shall excite 
and even shame our own people into a larger public spirit and 
better eflbrts to redeem from negligence our rural homes and 
villages. 

Nearly all our towns are full of objects of natural beauty 
easy of development, and very many of them rich in legendary 
and historical associations. What is greatly wanted is some- 
thing more of rui-al art and adornment. Something which shall 
beautify our country villages, educate public taste, make the 
homes of the fathers dearer to their sons and the local associ- 
ations of childhood dearer to old age, and thus turn back, in 
part at least, the tide of migration from the rural towns, and 
make the city seek the country life and make it what it used 
to be in our own State, and what it still is in the oldest and 
most cultivated nations of the world. 

I beg to remain with the highest respect. 

Your obedient servant, 

R D. Hubbard. 



CLINTON KURAL IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION. 

As calls are often made for a plan for Village Improvement 
Societies, I insert that adopted in Clinton. 

i. This Association shall be called "The Eural Improvement 
Association of Clinton." 

2. The object of this Association shall be to cultivate public 
spirit, quicken the social and intellectual life of the people, 
promote good fellowship, and secure public health by better 
hygienic conditions in our homes and surroundings, improve 
our streets, roads, public grounds, side-walks, and in general 
to build up and beautify the whole town, and thus enhance the 
value of its real estate and render Clinton a still more inviting 
place of residence. 

3. The officers of this Association shall consist of a President, 
a Vice-President, a Treasurer, a Secretary, and an Executive 
Committee of fifteen, six of whom shall be ladies. 

4. It shall be the duty of the Executive Committee to make 
all contracts, employ all laborers, expend all moneys, and 
superintend all improvements made by the Association. They 
shall hold meetings monthly from April to October in each 
year, and as much oftener as they may deem expedient. 

5. Every person, who shall plant three trees by the road side, 
under the direction of the Executive Committee, or pay three 
dollars in one year or one dollar annually, and obligate himself 
or herself to pay the same annually for three years, shall be a 
member of this Association. 

6. The payment of ten dollars annually for three years, or of 
twenty-five dollars in one sum, shall constitute one a life 
member of this Association. 

7. Five members of the Executive Committee present at any 
meeting shall constitute a quorum. 

8. No debt shall be contracted by the Executive Committee 
beyond the amount of available means within their control, 
and no member of the Association shall be liable for any debt 
of the Association, beyond the amount of his or her subscription. 



80 

9. The Executive Committee shall call an annual meeting, 
giving due notice of the same, for the election of officers of this 
Association, and at said meeting, shall make a djetailed report 
of all moneys received and expended during the year, the 
number of trees planted under their direction, and the number 
planted by individuals, length of side-walks made or repaired, 
and the doings of the Committee in general. 

10. This constitution may be amended at any annual meet 
ing by a two-thirds vote of the members present and voting. 



SCHOOLS AND COMMUNISM, 



NATIONAL SCHOOLS, 



AND OTHER PAPERS- 



B. G. ^^OETHEOP. 



[From Report of Connecticut State Board of Education for 1879.] 



NEW HAVEN: 

TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR. PRINTERS. 

18V9. 



